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Groschen - Albert of Brandenburg Breitgroschen

Issuer Halberstadt, Bishopric of
Year 1522
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Shape Round
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Obverse description Central quartered shield bearing the arms of Mainz, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and Brandenburg, surmounted by a cardinal's hat with pendant tassels. The composite arms are rendered in a late Gothic heraldic style. A circular Latin legend surrounds the shield within a beaded inner border.
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Edge Plain
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Additional information

Albert of Brandenburg held the Archbishopric of Mainz, the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, and the Bishopric of Halberstadt simultaneously — a concentration of ecclesiastical power that required papal dispensation and an enormous bribe to Rome, financed partly through the sale of indulgences in his territories. It was specifically this arrangement that provoked Martin Luther to publish his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, making Albert an unwitting catalyst of the Reformation. This coin was struck just five years later, when that rupture was already irreversible.

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