Double Giulio - Clement XIII Bust

Clement XIII — born Carlo della Torre Rezzonico, elected in 1758 — spent much of his pontificate in an increasingly desperate defense of the Jesuit order against suppression campaigns mounted by France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples simultaneously. The Double Giulio was a workhorse denomination of the papal monetary system, and issues from his reign are historically inseparable from that political siege: by 1773, his successor Clement XIV would be pressured into dissolving the Society of Jesus entirely, a capitulation Rezzonico refused to his death.