15 Scudi

The Sacro Monte di Pietà di Roma was not a central bank but a pawnbroking institution — founded in 1539 to provide loans to the poor at low interest, explicitly as an alternative to usury. By the late eighteenth century it had evolved into the primary deposit and note-issuing body for the Papal States, operating under direct papal supervision. These cedole, as the notes were called, circulated alongside specie in Rome and the surrounding territories during a period of chronic fiscal instability under successive pontificates.

The 15 Scudi denomination is an odd unit that reflects the institution's internal accounting logic rather than any standardized monetary scale. Surviving examples from this issue are uncommon; the Napoleonic suppression of papal financial institutions after 1798 disrupted both circulation and archival preservation.