3 Pfennig - Anselm Francis of Ingelheim

Anselm Franz von Ingelheim served as Archbishop-Elector of Mainz from 1679 until his death in 1695, presiding over a diocese still absorbing the devastation of the Thirty Years' War while simultaneously navigating Louis XIV's aggressive Reunions policy along the Rhine frontier. Small silver pfennig issues of this type functioned as the workhorse of local ecclesiastical commerce — the Archbishopric of Mainz maintained its own mint rights as an imperial estate, and these fractional pieces reflect that jealously guarded privilege more than any economic necessity.