1 Ducato - Clement VII

Giulio de' Medici was elected Pope Clement VII in November 1523, inheriting a papacy already destabilized by the Lutheran controversy and the competing ambitions of Charles V and Francis I. His pontificate ended in catastrophe: the Sack of Rome in May 1527, when unpaid imperial troops stormed the city and held the pope captive in Castel Sant'Angelo for seven months. Ducati struck after that date were issued from a papacy that had lost, temporarily, control of Rome itself.

Munt#110 places this within a tightly defined issue. The goldsmith work of the Roman zecca during Clement's reign shows consistent fineness, though the political turbulence of 1527–1528 almost certainly interrupted production.