Pfennig - Henry VI

Chur's late-medieval pfennigs occupy an awkward monetary niche — too light to matter in large transactions, yet essential for petty commerce in the Alpine passes that made the bishopric economically relevant at all. Henry VI of Montfort-Tettnang held the see from 1491 until his death in 1503, a period during which the Graubünden region was consolidating the loose canton alliances that would eventually formalize as the Free State of the Three Leagues. The bishop's minting rights, ancient by this point, were already being squeezed by the growing political autonomy of the secular communes surrounding Chur.