3 Pfennig Domkapitel

Paderborn's cathedral chapter — the Domkapitel — held the right to strike small copper coinage largely independent of the reigning prince-bishop, a jurisdictional quirk that produced issues like this one running parallel to episcopal output. The year 1618 places this coin at the exact opening of the Thirty Years' War, a conflict that would devastate Westphalia more thoroughly than almost any other German region over the following three decades.

Small copper pfennig issues from Westphalian ecclesiastical mints of this period circulated hard and were frequently counterfeited locally, which is why Schwede documented so many die variants across the series.