Schaffhausen, Stadt (de), Schaffhausen, city (en), Schaffhouse, ville (fr), Sciaffusa, città (it)
Definitions
en
The city of Schaffhausen, Switzerland, as issuing authority (ca. 1280-1798). De iure the right to mint coins was held by the
monastery of All Saints from 1080 onwards throughout the Middle Ages. However, in the town's understanding, this seems to
have been merely a formality (payment of the lease): They negotiate and mint independently. At some point between 1191 and
1194, under Henry VI, the town seems to have been taken under the protection of the crown directly as an imperial domain (see
the wording of the lost document RI IV,3 n. 619). Shortly afterwards, the Zähringen received it as a fief or (more likely)
as an imperial bailiwick. Schaffhausen must have been returned to the crown in 1218, it is at least listed as a direct imperial
estate in 1241. However, most of the sovereign rights remained in the hands of the monastery, which leased them as hereditary
fiefs to various families as early as the 13th century, including the office of mayor. In 1253 the city has its own seal,
which corresponds to its later coin type (a ram leaping from a tower). The first municipal coins appear around 1280, so the
management of the mint must by then have gone far beyond a lease by a private individual).
The pledge of the imperial cities of Zurich, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen and Rheinfelden to Leopold of Habsburg-Austria in 1330
(StA Zürich, Urk. C I No. 296) is difficult from a formal legal point of view (‘Versetzen zu recht und redlich Pfand’). It
probably corresponds most closely to an imperial bailiwick over the imperial city of Schaffhausen. For the time being, the
mint remained unchallenged in the hands of the imperial city, which even in 1367 alone determined how it wanted to ‘have and
organise’ its mint (so-called ‘Anlassbrief’). However, the dominant behaviour of the Habsburgs became increasingly brazen:
in 1370 and 1375, the executive power was redistributed to a few Habsburg loyalists; as early as 1376, Leopold instructed
this same body to mint the new hälblinge in accordance with the convention of 1376; in 1377, the city was also formally only
a Habsburg mint under the so-called ‘Coinage Treaty of Schaffhausen’. In 1415, the city once again became an imperial city
and thus independent of Habsburg. It was not until 1798, with the establishment of the Helvetic Republic, that the city of
Schaffhausen ceased to issue coins.
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