Denier Bracteate - Siegfried

Hersfeld Abbey held imperial immediacy — answering directly to the Holy Roman Emperor rather than any territorial lord — and that status granted its abbots the mint right that produced this piece. Siegfried's abbacy fell during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa and the turbulent succession of Henry VI, a period when ecclesiastical minting privileges were actively contested across the Reich. At 44 mm struck from less than a gram of silver, the technical challenge of producing a coherent image on such a thin, wide flan was considerable; Hersfeld's die-cutters were among the more accomplished in the Fulda region.