Gros - Adrian I

Adrian I von Riedmatten served as Bishop of Sion during one of the most turbulent periods in Valais history, navigating the diocese through the Reformation's spread into the Swiss Confederacy while maintaining Catholic authority in a region where the Protestant challenge was acute. The Bishopric struck its own coinage as a matter of longstanding feudal right, a privilege the bishops of Sion had exercised since the medieval period and defended jealously against encroachment from the Seven Dizains, the powerful local councils that were steadily eroding episcopal political control throughout the sixteenth century.