Denier Bracteate Piltene

The Bishopric of Courland was a small and perpetually contested ecclesiastical state on the eastern Baltic coast, squeezed between the Teutonic Order and the Lithuanian tribal confederacies throughout the fourteenth century. Piltene served as the bishop's seat precisely because it offered some distance from the Order's administrative reach at Goldingen. These bracteate deniers circulated within a regional economy still partially dependent on fur and amber trade rather than silver-heavy commerce, which explains the remarkably low billon content and the coin's near-wafer weight.

Haljak II#864 covers a long production span, and attributing individual pieces to a specific bishop within the 1328–1424 range remains difficult without die studies.