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Auction: 4018 - The Coinex Auction
Lot: 845

Liège, bishopric, Otbert, Denier, 1.02g, of uncertain mint, ot------a.eps bishop mitred facing left with crozier before, rev. -o or vg/eser---- facing crowned figure holding a three-storey building (Chestret 59 (illustrated from a poor example); hoard report 517 [where attributed to Alexander of Jülich]), weak on one side, otherwise good very fine, the only example in the hoard and very rare Estimate £ 700-750 Chestret tells how the extravagant rebuilding of the castle of Mirwart by Otbert had brought down on him the wrath of the monks of Saint-Hubert, who compared it to the palace at Aachen. Otbert was a strong supporter of the emperor Henry IV who visited him in Liège in 1101 and it is tempting to see this coin as some basis for this argument showing, as it does, the emperor holding a palace. Otbert was called before the archbishop of Cologne during Lent 1104 and publicly reprimanded for having enriched himself by having sold ecclesiastical preferments, despoiling the churches, frequently changing the legal money and diminishing its value.

Sold for
£2,500