Pfennig - Bernard II Heiligenkreuz

Bernard II of Carinthia, known as "the Spanheimer," ruled during a period of intense competition between the Babenberg dukes of Austria and the Spanheim dynasty over control of Alpine trade routes. These small bracteate-influenced pfennigs were struck at the Heiligenkreuz mint, a house closely tied to Cistercian patronage — the same monastic network that helped stabilize coinage standards across the German-speaking duchies in the early thirteenth century. The CNA Co2 classification places this among the earliest attributable Carinthian issues to Bernard's reign with any certainty.