From the Latin bractea , a thin piece of metal, is a name usually given to pieces of thin silver, impressed with a die, on which the device is cut in relief. Consequently the lines and figures depressed on the one side appear raised on the other, and the obverse of the coin presents the same features as the surface of the die.

They are supposed to have originated at the beginning of the twelfth century in Thuringia, and they were copied in other German provinces as well as in Switzer- land, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and Scandinavia. They were in use until the latter part of the fourteenth century, at which time the many types of Groschen gradually supplanted them.

The majority are of silver, but gold ones have been found; some of them, struck in copper and very base silver, probably served the same purpose as the tokens of succeeding periods.

The name, Bracteate, however, was not, applied to these coins until the eighteenth century. Their contemporary designa- tions were Pfennige, or Denarii, and that they took the place of the latter pieces and passed as current money is attested by the words numus, moneta, denarius , which are occasionally found in their inscriptions. To these varieties the name Schrift Brac- teaten is usually applied.