Pfennig - Eberhard I Friesach

Friesach, in Carinthia, became one of the most important minting centers in the German-speaking lands during the twelfth century precisely because it sat on the main trade route between Venice and the Danube basin. The archbishops of Salzburg held minting rights there from 1125, and the coins they struck — the so-called Friesacher Pfennig — spread so widely through central and southeastern Europe that they became a de facto regional currency, referenced in Hungarian, Bohemian, and Styrian documents for over a century after their initial issue.

Eberhard I held the archbishopric from 1147 to 1164, and his Friesach issues fall among the earliest attributable to a named archbishop within the CNA sequence.