Corvey, the Benedictine abbey on the Weser River, held minting rights intermittently across centuries but exercised them with particular frequency under its prince-abbots in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Maximilian of Horrich, who governed the abbey from 1714 to 1721, issued this copper pfennig piece during a period when the abbey's secular territorial authority was increasingly contested by neighboring Prussian and Hanoverian interests — small denominational coinage like this was partly a political assertion of jurisdictional independence as much as practical currency.
Corvey's copper issues from this period are sparsely documented; the Ilisch/Schwede corpus remains the authoritative reference for Westphalian ecclesiastical coinage precisely because standard numismatic literature passes over these minor abbatial strikes almost entirely.
Corvey, the Benedictine abbey on the Weser River, held minting rights intermittently across centuries but exercised them with particular frequency under its prince-abbots in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Maximilian of Horrich, who governed the abbey from 1714 to 1721, issued this copper pfennig piece during a period when the abbey's secular territorial authority was increasingly contested by neighboring Prussian and Hanoverian interests — small denominational coinage like this was partly a political assertion of jurisdictional independence as much as practical currency.
Corvey's copper issues from this period are sparsely documented; the Ilisch/Schwede corpus remains the authoritative reference for Westphalian ecclesiastical coinage precisely because standard numismatic literature passes over these minor abbatial strikes almost entirely.