1 Lira - Clement VII

Clement VII's pontificate was defined by catastrophe. The 1527 Sack of Rome by mutinous imperial troops left the pope a prisoner in Castel Sant'Angelo and the papal administration in ruins. Bologna issues like this lira emerged from the subsequent recovery period — it was in Bologna, in fact, that Clement met with Charles V in 1529 to negotiate the terms of a humiliating reconciliation, an encounter that culminated in the last imperial coronation ever performed by a pope.