The Tobiaspfennig takes its name from the Book of Tobit, a deuterocanonical text, and Frankfurt's civic authorities issued these copper pieces as alms tokens distributed to the poor at the city's hospitals and charitable institutions — not as circulating trade coinage. The 1547 issue falls squarely within Frankfurt's period of intense confessional tension, just a year before the city was forced to accept the Augsburg Interim, which temporarily reimposed Catholic practices on a city that had embraced Lutheranism since the 1530s.
JuF#221 is well-documented in Justus von Füsilier's Frankfurt token literature as one of the earlier datable copper issues in this series.
The Tobiaspfennig takes its name from the Book of Tobit, a deuterocanonical text, and Frankfurt's civic authorities issued these copper pieces as alms tokens distributed to the poor at the city's hospitals and charitable institutions — not as circulating trade coinage. The 1547 issue falls squarely within Frankfurt's period of intense confessional tension, just a year before the city was forced to accept the Augsburg Interim, which temporarily reimposed Catholic practices on a city that had embraced Lutheranism since the 1530s.
JuF#221 is well-documented in Justus von Füsilier's Frankfurt token literature as one of the earlier datable copper issues in this series.