Bugne - Robert of Lenoncourt Arms under hat

Robert de Lenoncourt held the see of Metz from 1551 to 1555, a tenure defined almost entirely by the crisis of that same year: the French occupation of Metz under the Duke of Guise in 1552, which effectively ended the city's status as a free imperial city. Small billon issues like this one were struck in the narrow window before that occupation restructured civic and episcopal authority alike. The Flon reference places this among a tight cluster of types attributed to his episcopate, none of which circulated long under stable conditions.