1 Carlino - Alexander VII John Nicholas Conti Vice-Legate

The Comtat Venaissin — a papal enclave entirely surrounded by French territory in Provence — occupied an awkward diplomatic position throughout the seventeenth century, and its coinage reflects that tension directly. Alexander VII governed the territory through appointed vice-legates, with Conti holding the post during a period when French royal pressure on papal temporal holdings was intensifying under Mazarin and the early personal rule of Louis XIV. Coins struck in the Comtat during these years carry the authority of Rome but circulated in an economy functionally integrated with France.

The carlino denomination itself was an anachronism by this date, persisting in the Comtat long after it had disappeared elsewhere.