12 Pfennig

The Cathedral Chapter of Münster exercised independent coinage rights as a spiritual lordship distinct from the Prince-Bishopric itself — a jurisdictional split that produced competing local issues and occasional disputes over which authority's coins were legally tender within the city. The 1582 date falls during the immediate aftermath of the Cologne War, when the attempted conversion of Archbishop Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg to Protestantism destabilized the entire ecclesiastical structure of northwest Germany and put intense pressure on chapter revenues.

Copper issues of this type circulated as emergency small change rather than prestige coinage. Weiland's Westfälische Münzkunde catalogues this piece as scarce in any condition.