2 Thalers - John George I Centenary of the Reformation

The 1617 Reformation centenary was the first occasion on which the Lutheran territories of the Holy Roman Empire deliberately organized a collective commemorative observance — a calculated act of confessional identity as much as religious piety. Saxony, as the birthplace of Luther's challenge and the Ernestine line's longtime claim to theological primacy, had particular reason to issue grandly, even though by 1617 the Albertinian electors had long since absorbed that symbolic inheritance from their Ernestine cousins.

Double thalers of this issue were presentation pieces from the outset, struck in limited numbers for diplomatic gifts and court distribution rather than commerce. The Davenport attribution places this among the most systematically catalogued of all German commemorative multiples from the early seventeenth century.