Gold Ecu - Anthony of Bourbon and Joan of Albret

Anthony of Bourbon held Béarn only through his wife — Joan of Albret was the sovereign in her own right, heiress to Navarre, and the joint coinage of this period reflects that tension precisely. The ecu was struck under their combined authority during a marriage that was politically convenient but personally turbulent, and within a decade Joan would convert to Calvinism, transforming Béarn into a Huguenot stronghold that placed it at the center of the French Wars of Religion.

Dy féodales 1293 remains the standard reference, with Schlumberger and the Poey d'Avant corpus confirming the type's attribution to the 1555 issue specifically.