20 Francs Sint-Jan-Baptist Zelzate

Belgian parish emergency notes occupy a peculiar corner of notaphily. During the acute coin shortage of World War One, hundreds of Belgian communes, parishes, and local businesses issued their own small-denomination scrip to keep trade moving after official coinage vanished from circulation. The ecclesiastical issuer here — a parish rather than a municipality — was not unusual for Zelzate or East Flanders more broadly; the Catholic Church's deep administrative presence in rural Flemish communities made parish-issued bon de caisse a practical and trusted instrument where no other authority stepped in.

Zelzate sits on the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal, a detail that gave it slightly more commercial activity than a purely agricultural village, which likely drove the need for this denomination specifically.