1 Quattrino - Urban VIII Bust, Saint Michael

Urban VIII — born Maffeo Barberini — oversaw the Papal States through the grinding years of the Thirty Years' War, a conflict that repeatedly strained papal finances and forced Rome into expensive diplomatic maneuvering between the Habsburg and French crowns. The quattrino was the lowest copper denomination in circulation, handled daily by Rome's laboring poor while silver and gold moved through entirely different hands. Urban's pontificate ran from 1623 to 1644, making this a mid-reign issue struck at a moment when the papacy was also funding the tail end of the Castro War against the Farnese.