1 Schilling - Johannes III von der Rope

The Bishopric of Dorpat — centered on present-day Tartu in Estonia — was a Livonian ecclesiastical state perpetually caught between the competing pressures of the Livonian Order, the Archbishop of Riga, and the encroaching interests of Novgorod and later Muscovy. Johannes III von der Rope held the see from 1498 until his death in 1515, a period during which Ivan III of Moscow was aggressively dismantling Novgorodian independence and pushing military pressure westward into Livonian territory. The billon content reflects chronic silver shortages that plagued the smaller Livonian mints throughout the late 15th century.