Denier Bracteate - Diethelm of Krenkingen

Diethelm of Krenkingen served as Abbot of Reichenau from 1169 to 1206, a tenure that coincided with the abbey's last period of meaningful political influence before its prolonged institutional decline. By the late twelfth century, Reichenau had already ceded much of its earlier dominance in manuscript production and religious scholarship, yet retained enough imperial favor — and the minting rights granted under earlier Ottonian privilege — to strike bracteate issues of this type. The single-sided fabric was by then the dominant coinage form across the German-speaking lands, having spread from Saxony and Thuringia westward over the preceding decades.