Catalog
Pfennig - Bernard II Heiligenkreuz
| Issuer | Duchy of Carinthia (Austrian States) |
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| Year | 1220-1240 |
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| Orientation | Variable alignment ↺ |
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| Obverse description | Full-length frontal figure of the standing duke, robed, holding a sword in each hand with arms outstretched. The effigy is rendered in the flat, stylized Romanesque manner typical of early 13th-century Austrian bracteate-influenced coinage. A circular inscription in Latin runs between two concentric beaded or pelleted borders surrounding the central device. |
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| Mintage | ND (1220-1240) |
| Additional information |
Bernard II ruled Carinthia from 1202 until his death in 1256, and the Heiligenkreuz bracteate pfennigs attributed to his reign take their name from the Cistercian abbey of Heiligenkreuz in Lower Austria — a house with deep ties to the Babenberg dynasty that effectively controlled the political fabric of the region. These thin, single-sided strikes were the dominant coin form across much of the German-speaking world during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, their fragility making circulated survivors considerably scarcer than their original mintage volumes would suggest.
CNA Cq74 sits within a dense attribution cluster for this period, where die linkages and weight analysis remain the primary tools for distinguishing issues across overlapping regional mints.