Beda Angehrn served as Prince-Abbot of Saint Gall from 1767 until the abbey's dissolution in 1805, making him the last abbot to govern the territory with full secular authority. The Abbey of Saint Gall held the right of coinage — the Münzrecht — as an imperial immediacy of the Holy Roman Empire, a privilege that survived well into the eighteenth century largely through political inertia rather than economic necessity. By 1774, Swiss cantonal currency was already dominant in everyday commerce, and abbatial issues like this one circulated more as assertions of jurisdictional standing than as workhorses of trade.
Beda Angehrn served as Prince-Abbot of Saint Gall from 1767 until the abbey's dissolution in 1805, making him the last abbot to govern the territory with full secular authority. The Abbey of Saint Gall held the right of coinage — the Münzrecht — as an imperial immediacy of the Holy Roman Empire, a privilege that survived well into the eighteenth century largely through political inertia rather than economic necessity. By 1774, Swiss cantonal currency was already dominant in everyday commerce, and abbatial issues like this one circulated more as assertions of jurisdictional standing than as workhorses of trade.