Pfennig - Frederick II of Walchen Friesach

Frederick II of Walchen served as Archbishop of Salzburg from 1270 to 1284, a period when the Friesach mint remained one of the most commercially significant striking facilities in the eastern Alpine region. Friesach pfennigs — broadly called "Friesacher" — had circulated so widely across Carinthia, Styria, and into the Balkans since the twelfth century that the type had effectively become a regional trade currency independent of any single issuer's authority.

By Frederick's tenure, the coinage was in slow decline against the rising Wiener Pfennig. CNA Ca51 represents one of the later episcopate attributions in a long sequence of bracteate-adjacent thin-flan issues from this mint.