Denier Bracteate - John Philip of Schönborn

John Philip von Schönborn became Archbishop of Mainz in 1647, the same year the Peace of Westphalia was being negotiated — he was himself one of the driving diplomatic figures behind those talks. His tenure coincided with the painstaking rebuilding of Rhenish economic life after the Thirty Years' War had gutted coin circulation across the region. Bracteates of this extreme lightness were a practical concession to silver scarcity, struck on foil-thin flans from a single die.

At 0.16 g, these pieces wore and fragmented easily, which explains surviving attrition rates.