Notable Notes: Papal Paper Money

Habemus papam… We have a pope! It has only been a matter of months since a plume of white smoke billowed up from the humble metal chimney of the Sistine Chapel rooftop, signifying that a two-thirds voting majority was successfully achieved by the sequestered papal conclave. This College of Cardinals had, in accordance with the centuries-old Roman Catholic Church tradition, visually demonstrated to the tens of thousands of faithful gatherers anxiously waiting outside that a new pope had been elected.

On that day, American Cardinal Bishop Robert Francis Prevost, known now by his papal name Leo XIV, had become both the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics as well as the sovereign head of the Vatican City State. To commemorate this once-in-a-generation phenomenon of appreciable global interest and impact, this installment of Notable Notes will take a look at a lovely late-18th-century, large-format, higher-denominated Papal States paper currency issue and delve into some of the fascinating associated regional history and geography.

While it is widely known that the Vatican is the smallest autonomous microstate on Earth in terms of both land area (just 0.18 square miles) and population (less than a thousand inhabitants), its origin story and precursory configurations aren’t exactly a matter of common knowledge. The 1929 signing of the Lateran Treaty between Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and the Holy See under Pope Pius XI established Vatican City as we know it today. Prior to that, and before the preceding 60-year period of Italian unification that saw almost no territorial reign by the church, popes took on the functions of secular government firsthand, maintaining independent rule over large swaths of the central Italian peninsula for over a thousand years. These land regions were known as the Papal States, and they endured from about 756 until their demise in 1870.

Of course, a critical part of governance involves keeping economies humming and overseeing the production of circulating monetary instruments required to make that happen. A handful of quasi-private commercial institutions within the Papal States, along with their treasury, printed and circulated hundreds of different notes of varying designs, currency units, and denominations between 1785 and 1870, the majority of which remain rather cost-accessible and well-preserved for collectors to enjoy today. We present one stellar example: a 200 Scudi issued between 1788 and 1792 by Sacro Monte della Pieta’ di Roma.

Sacro Monte della Pietà di Roma, in and of itself, holds a unique and interesting backstory. Formed in 1539 by Pope Paul III as a sort of pawnbroking service to supply zero-interest loans to the impoverished, the physical footprint of the sprawling complex existed in Rome’s Regola district, just a mile or two southeast of modern-day Vatican City. Over time, the facility grew into providing other forms of financial and banking services, including the issuance of the types of paper currency showcased here.

Graded Very Fine 20 by PCGS Banknote, this eye-pleasing example, with its ornamental block frame, fancily scripted obligation in Italian, numerous fountain pen-applied authorizing and endorsing signatures, dual circular embossments up top, and intricate paper watermarking throughout, would certainly make the new pope very proud.