Dicken Saint Leodegar facing right, date on reverse, small square shield

Lucerne's civic coinage of the early seventeenth century was produced under the authority of the city council at a time when the Swiss Confederation's member cantons were actively asserting their monetary independence through locally controlled silver issues. The Dicken denomination — roughly equivalent to a Batzen-based reckoning common to the period — served inter-cantonal trade through the central Swiss passes, where Lucerne's position on the Reuss made it a commercial pivot point.

The five-year span of this type coincides with the tail end of the Price Revolution's pressure on silver coinage across Europe, a period when Swiss city-states were adjusting their monetary output to compensate for Kipper und Wipperzeit debasement flooding in from the German states to the north.