Courte - Maximilian of Berghes

Maximilian of Berghes held the see of Cambrai from 1556 until his death in 1562, a period during which the southern Netherlands remained under Habsburg authority following Charles V's abdication. The courte — a low-denomination copper piece — was the workhorse of everyday exchange in the region, where ecclesiastical lordships retained minting rights as a feudal privilege increasingly at odds with centralizing Spanish imperial policy.

Cambrai occupied an anomalous position: technically part of the Holy Roman Empire rather than the Spanish Netherlands proper, which complicated the bishop's monetary authority in practice.