The Roman Senate's ducato issues of this period were struck in direct imitation of the Venetian ducat — an acknowledgment that Venice had effectively set the gold standard for Mediterranean commerce. Rome's own fiscal authority was severely compromised throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, with the papacy absent in Avignon until 1377 and the city convulsed by competing noble factions and the short-lived tribunate of Cola di Rienzo.
MIR 179/23 places this among a tightly documented sequence of senatorial emissions, though die linkage studies have confirmed that actual production was sporadic rather than sustained.
The Roman Senate's ducato issues of this period were struck in direct imitation of the Venetian ducat — an acknowledgment that Venice had effectively set the gold standard for Mediterranean commerce. Rome's own fiscal authority was severely compromised throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, with the papacy absent in Avignon until 1377 and the city convulsed by competing noble factions and the short-lived tribunate of Cola di Rienzo.
MIR 179/23 places this among a tightly documented sequence of senatorial emissions, though die linkage studies have confirmed that actual production was sporadic rather than sustained.