1 Thaler - Frederick of Wied

Frederick of Wied held the archbishopric from 1562 to 1567, but his tenure was defined less by governance than by the spreading influence of Lutheranism within the chapter itself. The Cologne archbishops of this period were under sustained pressure from Protestant reformers, and Frederick — himself a member of the House of Wied, which had already produced one Protestant convert in Hermann V — walked a narrow confessional line throughout his rule.

Davenport's attribution under GT I places this squarely among the large silver coinages of the ecclesiastical Rhine states, a series notorious for short-run production tied to specific episcopal administrations. The two-year window of this issue reflects that pattern exactly.