The Lordship of Masserano occupied a narrow strip of the Piedmontese Alps where the Fieschi and later the Ferrero-Fieschi family minted aggressively during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, exploiting the jurisdictional ambiguity of a semi-autonomous lordship caught between Savoy and Milan. The tirolino denomination itself derives from the Tyrolean kreuzer tradition that had pushed south through Alpine trade routes, adopted and adapted by small northern Italian lords who needed small-change coinage without the infrastructure of a major mint. Crevacuore was the secondary seat of the lordship, and anonymous issues attributed to it under MIR 420 suggest deliberate obfuscation of issuing authority — a known practice among minor lords to avoid Imperial scrutiny over minting rights.
The Lordship of Masserano occupied a narrow strip of the Piedmontese Alps where the Fieschi and later the Ferrero-Fieschi family minted aggressively during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, exploiting the jurisdictional ambiguity of a semi-autonomous lordship caught between Savoy and Milan. The tirolino denomination itself derives from the Tyrolean kreuzer tradition that had pushed south through Alpine trade routes, adopted and adapted by small northern Italian lords who needed small-change coinage without the infrastructure of a major mint. Crevacuore was the secondary seat of the lordship, and anonymous issues attributed to it under MIR 420 suggest deliberate obfuscation of issuing authority — a known practice among minor lords to avoid Imperial scrutiny over minting rights.