Denier - Jean de Michaelis

Jean de Michaelis held the see of Lausanne for barely two years before his death in 1468, making his coinage among the shortest-lived episcopal issues of the Swiss plateau. The Lausanne bishopric had long exercised the right to strike billon deniers under the Holy Roman Empire, but by the mid-fifteenth century that monetary authority was increasingly contested by Bern and Savoy, both pressing their influence into Vaudois territory. Surviving pieces are rarely encountered, a direct consequence of the reign's brevity and the low intrinsic value that kept these coins circulating hard until worn to illegibility.