Pfennig 'Vierzipfliger'

The Fraumünster in Zürich held minting rights granted by Louis the German in 853, making it one of the earliest ecclesiastical mints in the region. The "Vierzipfliger" — named for its four-pointed, cloverleaf-cut flan — is a product of that privilege exercised at its most local and uncompromising: thin, irregular, struck on hand-cut blanks with no pretense of standardization. These bracteate-adjacent pfennigs circulated within a tight regional economy where the abbey's authority was the only monetary reality that mattered.