Innocent XI — Benedetto Odescalchi — was elected pope in 1676 after a conclave lasting nearly five months, and his pontificate proved as combative as that election process suggested. His running fiscal conflict with Louis XIV over the *régale* — the French crown's claimed right to collect revenues from vacant bishoprics — consumed much of his reign and very nearly produced a formal schism. These grossi were struck while that standoff remained unresolved, with French ecclesiastical policy effectively defying Rome.
The cartouche reverse type with the NOCET MINVS inscription identifies a specific emission within a pontificate that generated considerable die variety across its grosso series.
Innocent XI — Benedetto Odescalchi — was elected pope in 1676 after a conclave lasting nearly five months, and his pontificate proved as combative as that election process suggested. His running fiscal conflict with Louis XIV over the *régale* — the French crown's claimed right to collect revenues from vacant bishoprics — consumed much of his reign and very nearly produced a formal schism. These grossi were struck while that standoff remained unresolved, with French ecclesiastical policy effectively defying Rome.
The cartouche reverse type with the NOCET MINVS inscription identifies a specific emission within a pontificate that generated considerable die variety across its grosso series.