1 Daalder "Leeuwendaalder" Lascaris Countermark

The Knights of Malta had no functioning mint of their own during much of the mid-seventeenth century, so the Order solved its currency problem by countermarking Dutch leeuwendaalders already in circulation throughout the Mediterranean. The leeuwendaalder was the workhorse trade coin of the Levant trade — cheap silver, widely accepted, and abundant enough that the Dutch Republic was minting them in enormous quantities specifically for export. Countermarking foreign coinage rather than striking original issues was a practical necessity, not an administrative choice.

The Lascaris countermark corresponds to the Grandmastership of Jean-Paul Lascaris Castellar, who held office from 1636 to 1657. Coins bearing his countermark represent the Order's monetary authority exercised entirely through appropriation of another sovereign's coinage.