2 Schillings

Hildesheim's civic coinage of this period reflects the city's stubborn insistence on maintaining independent minting rights despite sustained pressure from the surrounding Prince-Bishopric. The city and the bishopric had contested jurisdictional authority for generations — the so-called Hildesheim Diocesan Feud had stripped the bishopric of much of its territorial base in 1523, leaving an unusual political patchwork in which the city operated with considerable autonomy. These schillings are products of that contested municipal independence.

The KM#140.1 designation distinguishes this from closely related civic issues of the same period, with Bucchardt-Bahrfeldt's reference remaining the authoritative die study for Lower Saxon municipal coinage of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.