Ducat - Joseph Benedikt

The Bishopric of Chur held a precarious position among the Graubünden ecclesiastical territories in the mid-eighteenth century, squeezed between the secular Three Leagues and an increasingly assertive Austrian influence over Alpine transit routes. Joseph Benedikt von Rost, who held the see from 1728 until his death in 1754, used ducats like this one partly as instruments of political assertion — coinage rights being one of the few unambiguous markers of sovereign authority still available to a small ecclesiastical prince.

The HMZ variant designation 461c distinguishes this emission from earlier strikings of the same reign by minor die differences. Chur's gold output across this period was modest by any measure, and individual die marriages are short-lived.