1 Scudo - Alexander VII

Alexander VII — born Fabio Chigi — was elected pope in April 1655 after a conclave that lasted eighty days, one of the longest of the seventeenth century. Bologna, as one of the wealthiest legations of the Papal States, maintained its own mint and struck gold scudi under papal authority throughout his pontificate. The Chigi family's banking roots in Siena gave Alexander an unusually sophisticated grasp of monetary affairs, though his reign is better remembered for his protracted disputes with Louis XIV over French gallicanism and the humiliation of the Corsican Guard affair in 1662.

Berman 1918 places this emission within the first three years of Alexander's reign, a relatively short production window that accounts for the type's scarcity in the market today.