Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, Grand Master from 1775 to 1797, was among the most administratively capable rulers the Order produced in its Maltese period — his tenure saw the promulgation of a new legal code in 1784 and sustained efforts to modernize the island's institutions. This copper taro belongs to his coinage reform of the 1780s, which rationalized a system that had accumulated considerable inconsistency across previous Grand Masters.
The taro itself derived from the Sicilian tarì, a unit carried into Maltese monetary practice through centuries of proximity to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. De Rohan's issues would be among the last struck by an independent Order — France seized Malta in 1798, ending sovereign coinage altogether.
Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, Grand Master from 1775 to 1797, was among the most administratively capable rulers the Order produced in its Maltese period — his tenure saw the promulgation of a new legal code in 1784 and sustained efforts to modernize the island's institutions. This copper taro belongs to his coinage reform of the 1780s, which rationalized a system that had accumulated considerable inconsistency across previous Grand Masters.
The taro itself derived from the Sicilian tarì, a unit carried into Maltese monetary practice through centuries of proximity to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. De Rohan's issues would be among the last struck by an independent Order — France seized Malta in 1798, ending sovereign coinage altogether.