47 Scudi

The Sacro Monte della Pietà di Roma was one of the oldest functioning credit institutions in early modern Europe, established in 1539 primarily to offer interest-free loans to the poor against pledged goods — a deliberate counter to usurious private lending. By the late eighteenth century it had evolved into something closer to a full deposit and note-issuing bank operating under papal authority, and its handwritten or partly printed cedole circulated in Rome and the surrounding territories with genuine commercial acceptance.

The 47 Scudi denomination is characteristically odd. The Monte della Pietà issued notes in irregular face values corresponding to actual deposited sums rather than standardized round figures — a feature that distinguishes these instruments from conventional banknotes and gives them a hybrid character somewhere between a receipt and a bearer obligation.