Teston - Charles V

Besançon's right to strike coinage rested on a imperial privilege granted by Maximilian I, confirmed and extended under Charles V — whose name these testons carry despite the city's fierce determination to manage its own mint affairs. The city was nominally imperial but functionally autonomous, a status it defended with considerable legal tenacity throughout the sixteenth century.

The teston denomination itself arrived in the Franche-Comté monetary orbit from France and the Italian states, where it had established itself as a prestige silver piece in the late fifteenth century. Besançon's adoption of the form placed it squarely in that tradition while insisting on its own civic identity in the process.