Denier Bracteate - Welf VI

Welf VI, who held extensive Swabian territories as a vassal of the Hohenstaufen after the catastrophic Welf-Hohenstaufen conflict, granted minting rights to St. Martin Abbey at Sindelfingen — a house he patronized directly. The bracteate's paper-thin fabric and single-sided striking technique, dominant in southern German ecclesiastical minting through this period, made these coins acutely fragile in circulation. Most surviving examples show stress cracks from the striking process itself, not from use.