Philip the Handsome inherited Brabant at age eighteen following his mother Mary of Burgundy's death in a riding accident, and his early coinage was administered largely by regents before he assumed fuller control. This florin belongs to his first type, issued before the monetary reforms that followed his entry into Castile — a period when Brabant's mints were still operating under Burgundian monetary conventions his father Maximilian had imposed.
The .667 fineness places this well below the Florentine standard that originally defined the florin denomination, a degradation that had accumulated across generations of fiscal pressure in the Low Countries.
Philip the Handsome inherited Brabant at age eighteen following his mother Mary of Burgundy's death in a riding accident, and his early coinage was administered largely by regents before he assumed fuller control. This florin belongs to his first type, issued before the monetary reforms that followed his entry into Castile — a period when Brabant's mints were still operating under Burgundian monetary conventions his father Maximilian had imposed.
The .667 fineness places this well below the Florentine standard that originally defined the florin denomination, a degradation that had accumulated across generations of fiscal pressure in the Low Countries.