1 Scudo - Benedetto XIV Holy Mother Church

Benedetto XIV — Prospero Lambertini — was by most accounts the most intellectually formidable pope of the eighteenth century, a canonist and scholar who corresponded with Voltaire and Frederick the Great. His pontificate coincided with mounting pressure from European monarchies demanding the suppression of the Jesuits, a conflict that would outlast him and consume his successor. The scudo issues of 1753–54 fall in his final years, when his administration was increasingly occupied with the concordats he negotiated with Naples, Sardinia, and Spain — each one ceding ground the Holy See would spend generations trying to recover.