Denier Bracteate - Philip Christopher of Sötern

Philip Christopher von Sötern was elected Archbishop of Trier in 1623, immediately inheriting a territory caught between Spanish and French imperial ambitions during the Thirty Years' War. He would eventually place Trier under French protection in 1632 — a decision that prompted the Spanish to arrest him in 1635, beginning a captivity that lasted nearly a decade. These bracteate deniers, struck from a single die through a thin silver flan, were produced across the most turbulent years of his tenure before that arrest ended regular minting under his authority.