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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 7761759, member: 110504&quot;]Here&#039;s my only, representative &#039;Freisacher&#039; pfennig.&nbsp; This is of Bernhard von Sponheim, Duke of Carinthia (in eastern Bavaria /western Austria) 1202-1246.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1330843[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1330844[/ATTACH]</p><p>Couple of fun things going on here.&nbsp; The obverse shows Bernhard, in a mail hauberk, brandishing a sword (the annulet is the pommel) and holding a shield with a fess (horizontal bar).&nbsp; The fess corresponds to half of the Carinthian ducal coat of arms, blazoned &#039;Gules [red], a fess argent [silver or, more commonly, white].&#039;</p><p><br /></p><p>The other thing I like is the thematic minimalism of the obverse motif.&nbsp; Given the small modules and indifferent striking for which the &#039;Freisacher&#039; series is justly notorious, it&#039;s as if Bernhard is saying, &#039;Mess with me, and this is what might happen.&#039;&nbsp; The duchy of Carinthia evolved from an earlier march (/buffer state) on the eastern, Hungarian border of the German empire, going back to the 11th century.&nbsp; It was still very much on the German political and cultural frontier.</p><p><br /></p><p>All of which belies Bernhard&#039;s own reputation as a proponent of influences to the west, including <i>Minnesang</i>, the relatively late, German version of French and Occitan troubadour literature.&nbsp; Here&#039;s his seal, from Wikimedia Commons.&nbsp; (Here the coat of arms, with a lion, is a variant of the other component of the ducal blazon.&nbsp; In the German countries, heraldry, along with other elements of the western chivalric ethos, took a little longer to catch on.&nbsp; The heraldry, in particular, was still in a state of flux.)</p><p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/BernardSponheim.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p>Another (pfennig/) denar of Bernhard&#039;s (Much, Much scarcer) is listed on CoinArchives.&nbsp; Between the seal and the denar, you can see what Bernhard wanted to say, when the module allowed him to speak other than in sounbytes.</p><p><img src="https://www.coinarchives.com/a680fcdda92b27cc534d021a85104c12/img/rhenumis/001/image00177.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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