Currency of the Papal States

from the Tom Fitzgerald Collection

from the Stonecat Collection

The first specimen is a note for 93 scudi issued in 1786 by the Bank of the Holy Spirit in Rome. Sponsored by the popes and originally part of the municipal Monte di Pieta, its activities expanded so that by the 1780's the economy of the Papal States was operating on these paper notes. The French invasion of 1795 led to the looting of the Monte di Pieta and the bank and its notes collapsed.

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