1 Zehner - Ernest of Bayern

Ernest of Bavaria held the See of Passau from 1517 until his death in 1540, one of several Wittelsbach princes who accumulated ecclesiastical offices as political instruments during the early Reformation period. This issue falls squarely in the years when Luther's challenge to Rome was forcing every German bishop to take visible positions — coinage being one of the few tools an ecclesiastical lord had to assert territorial authority without an army.

The Zehner denomination, worth ten Pfennig, occupied a practical middle tier in regional commerce along the Danube corridor.