1 Scudo d'Oro - Clement VII

Clement VII — Giulio de' Medici — issued this scudo in the immediate aftermath of the most catastrophic event of his pontificate: the Sack of Rome in 1527, which had left him briefly a prisoner in Castel Sant'Angelo and the papal treasury gutted. By 1533-34, his relationship with Charles V had been cautiously rebuilt, yet his refusal to annul Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon — announced definitively in 1533 — had just cost Rome its hold over England. The Bologna mint, operating under papal authority restored after years of Este and then Bentivoglio interference, struck this issue as the papacy reasserted financial and political footing on multiple fronts simultaneously.