Denier - Stephen III

Stephen III came to power as a teenager in 1162 and spent much of his reign fighting off rival claimants — his uncles Stephen IV and Ladislaus II, both backed at various points by Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, who had his own ambitions over Hungarian succession. The political instability meant royal authority was intermittently contested throughout the decade, and coinage from this reign reflects a fractured administrative period rather than a stable issuing program.

The catalog references here — particularly the CAC and EK designations — place this piece within a tightly sequenced typology that Hungarian specialists use to navigate what is otherwise a murky attribution landscape for 12th-century deniers.