Denier Bracteate - Philip Christopher of Sötern

Philip Christopher von Sötern was Bishop of Speyer from 1610 before also becoming Elector-Archbishop of Trier in 1623 — making him one of the most politically consequential ecclesiastical figures of the Thirty Years' War period. These bracteates were struck at the very moment imperial authority in the Rhineland was fracturing, with Spanish and Swedish forces both treating the region as a corridor. Philip Christopher's later imprisonment by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1635, held for nine years on charges of collaborating with France, underscores just how volatile his tenure was. The bracteate fabric itself — single-sided, wafer-thin — reflects a minting tradition already archaic by the 1620s.