4 Kreuzers / Batzen - Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg

Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg was not a churchman by vocation — he was a Habsburg diplomat who rose through the church by royal favor, becoming Archbishop of Salzburg in 1519 after decades as Maximilian I's principal political fixer. His tenure opened against the immediate pressure of the Reformation, and Salzburg's mint output during these years reflects an administration more concerned with fiscal consolidation than spiritual matters. The Peasants' War of 1525 would end his minting of this type abruptly; Lang's brutal suppression of the Salzburg uprising that year remains one of the bloodiest episodes in the archbishopric's history.