Picciolo chasolesi

Volterra's bishops held temporal coinage rights across several interrupted periods during the medieval commune era, and this issue dates to the episcopate of Ranieri Belforti, whose family dominated Volterran politics with enough force that the commune briefly lost autonomous control of the mint. The picciolo — the smallest fractional denomination in the Tuscan billon hierarchy — was the everyday workhorse of local markets, and examples from minor episcopal mints like this survive almost exclusively in worn, fragmentary condition due to heavy use relative to their negligible intrinsic value.