1 Thaler - John IV of Hoya

Johann IV of Hoya held the Bishopric of Münster from 1566 until his death in 1574, a tenure defined largely by his efforts to stabilize Catholic ecclesiastical authority in a region where the Reformation had already taken deep root in surrounding territories. The Bishopric itself had never recovered its full prestige after the catastrophic Anabaptist kingdom of Münster in 1534–35, and coinage of this period carried an implicit political weight beyond its face value.

Ilisch's attribution to die variety 1a places this among the earliest strikes of the type.