Dicken - Johann V

Johann V of Werdenberg-Heiligenberg held the see of Chur from 1601 until his death in 1627, navigating the bishopric through some of the most turbulent confessional politics in the Graubünden — a region where Reformed, Catholic, and Zwinglian communities were in constant friction and the Gotthard and Splügen passes made every local power a target for Spanish and French interference alike. The Dicken denomination, a Swiss heavy silver coin roughly equivalent to the south German Dicken tradition, was the principal large silver denomination of the Rhaetian ecclesiastical mints in this period. HMZ 2#407e distinguishes this as one of several die variants produced in Johann's early episcopate.