1 Grosso - Alexander VI

Rodrigo Borgia secured his election as Alexander VI in August 1492 through what contemporaries — and later historians — regarded as the most nakedly corrupt conclave of the Renaissance, with mule-loads of silver reportedly distributed among cardinal-electors. His eleven-year pontificate saw the Papal States function less as a religious administration than as a dynastic vehicle for his son Cesare, whose military campaigns to consolidate central Italian territories were financed in part through the mint at Rome. The grosso series of his reign is among the more consistently produced silver of his papacy, referenced against Berman's authoritative survey of papal coinage at entry 532.