2 Kreuzers - Lothair Francis of Schönborn

Lothair Francis of Schönborn held the Bishopric of Bamberg from 1693 while simultaneously serving as Archbishop-Elector of Mainz from 1695 — an accumulation of ecclesiastical offices that made him one of the most politically powerful churchmen in the late Holy Roman Empire. His tenure coincided with the aftermath of the Nine Years' War and the grinding fiscal pressures it placed on the smaller ecclesiastical territories of Franconia. Small silver issues like this one were practical necessities for local commerce, struck in quantities that kept the bishop's mints occupied well into the early eighteenth century.