Denier Bracteate - Anna II of Limburg

Anna II von Limburg served as abbess of Herford from 1520 until her death in 1565, presiding over the institution during the turbulent decades when Lutheran reform movements were actively dismantling monastic authority across Westphalia. That Herford continued issuing bracteate deniers into the mid-sixteenth century is itself notable — the bracteate tradition had largely collapsed elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire by the fifteenth century. Herford's mint right, granted by imperial privilege, gave the abbey unusual monetary autonomy that outlasted comparable ecclesiastical mints by generations.