Denier

The Fraumünster in Zürich held minting rights granted by Louis the German in 853, making it one of the earliest ecclesiastical mints in the region. By the eleventh century the abbey — governed exclusively by aristocratic canonesses, not monks — wielded enough secular authority to produce coinage in its own right, a privilege that placed its abbesses on equal footing with territorial bishops.

The exceptionally low silver fineness of 0.37 reflects broader debasement trends in regional ecclesiastical issues as abbeys balanced production costs against nominal face value.