Wąchock Abbey, a Cistercian house founded in 1179, held minting rights granted by the Polish princes during the fragmentation period — a time when dozens of regional ecclesiastical and secular lords struck their own small silver issues to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of centralized Piast coinage authority. Bracteates of this type are single-sided, struck on thin flans by pressing a single die through the blank, which makes them extraordinarily fragile; surviving examples with intact edges are genuinely uncommon.
The issuing abbot cannot be identified with certainty from the numismatic record alone. Kop#239 remains one of the more obscure entries in Kopicki's corpus.
Wąchock Abbey, a Cistercian house founded in 1179, held minting rights granted by the Polish princes during the fragmentation period — a time when dozens of regional ecclesiastical and secular lords struck their own small silver issues to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of centralized Piast coinage authority. Bracteates of this type are single-sided, struck on thin flans by pressing a single die through the blank, which makes them extraordinarily fragile; surviving examples with intact edges are genuinely uncommon.
The issuing abbot cannot be identified with certainty from the numismatic record alone. Kop#239 remains one of the more obscure entries in Kopicki's corpus.