14 Scudi

The Sacro Monte della Pietà di Roma was not a bank in any modern sense — it was a pawnbroking institution founded in the sixteenth century under papal authority to provide low-interest loans to the poor, explicitly as a counter to usury. Its paper obligations circulated as a de facto currency in Rome for much of the eighteenth century, backed by the pledged goods held in its warehouses rather than by specie reserves.

The manuscript authorisation on each note meant that no two examples left the institution identically — individual signing officials completed them by hand, making forgery harder but also creating subtle variations across the series. By 1792, the institution was operating under serious fiscal strain that would only worsen with the French occupation six years later.