Quadruple Gold Ecu - Alexander VII Flavio Chigi Legate

Comtat Venaissin — the papal enclave straddling the Rhône in what is now Provence — was governed by a legate appointed directly from Rome, functioning as a sovereign territory entirely separate from French jurisdiction despite being physically surrounded by it. Alexander VII appointed his nephew Flavio Chigi as legate in 1658, a straightforward exercise of papal nepotism that nonetheless placed a capable administrator in a strategically sensitive post during a period of persistent friction with Louis XIV.

The enclave's right to strike its own coinage was jealously maintained as a marker of temporal sovereignty distinct from French royal prerogative. Chigi's legateship ended in 1662 when he was recalled to Rome, fixing the production window precisely.