Grosso - John XXII

John XXII, elected pope in 1316 at age seventy-two, ruled from Avignon rather than Rome — and it was precisely this absentee administration of the Papal States that made mints like Macerata politically indispensable. Local coinage reinforced temporal authority in territories that could not be governed in person. The Macerata grosso was struck under the oversight of a papal rector, one of several appointed officials tasked with keeping the central Italian communes from drifting toward the Ghibelline factions John spent much of his pontificate fighting.

John XXII was also the pope who declared the Franciscan doctrine of apostolic poverty heretical in 1323, triggering a prolonged conflict with the Franciscan order and the excommunication of Louis IV — turbulent ecclesiastical politics that ran concurrently with this coin's entire production window.