1/2 Zecchino - Pius VI

Pius VI authorized Bologna's continued half-zecchino production well into the 1780s despite mounting fiscal strain on the Papal States, strain that would culminate within a decade in Napoleon's forced extraction of 21 million scudi under the Treaty of Tolentino. Bologna operated as a semi-autonomous papal legation with its own mint, and the city's coinage ran parallel to — but distinct from — Roman issues throughout the eighteenth century.

The .986 fineness held to a standard Bologna had maintained since the Renaissance, a deliberate marker of mercantile credibility in northern Italian trade networks where coin purity was negotiated rather than assumed.