1 Ferding - Johannes VI Bey

The Bishopric of Dorpat — a Catholic ecclesiastical state centered on present-day Tartu in Estonia — minted aggressively throughout the 1530s as the Livonian political order began fracturing under Lutheran pressure and the growing threat of Muscovite expansion to the east. Johannes VI Bey held the see from 1528 until secularization forced the issue entirely. The ferding was the workhorse denomination of Baltic silver commerce, circulating alongside the coinages of the Livonian Order and the rival archbishopric of Riga in a currency environment that was anything but unified.