1 Scudo d'Oro - Urban VIII

Urban VIII — born Maffeo Barberini — was in the final, embattled years of his pontificate when these were struck. The Castro War, which he launched in 1641 against the Farnese family partly to carve out territory for his nephews, would ultimately bankrupt the papal treasury and leave Rome so impoverished that his death in 1644 was reportedly met with public celebration. The coins of his later reign circulated through a curia already strained by the costs of nepotism on an almost unprecedented scale.

The Berman reference distinguishes two die varieties across this emission window, catalogued separately as 1704.