Perellos y Roccaful served as Grand Master from 1697 until his death in 1720, one of the longer tenures of the early modern period. The Maltese zecchino was deliberately modeled on the Venetian ducat — same fineness, near-identical weight — to ensure acceptability in Mediterranean trade networks where the ducat's reputation was irreplaceable. The Order's mint on Malta issued these not as a vanity exercise but out of genuine fiscal necessity: running a naval operation against Ottoman shipping required hard currency that merchants across the Levant would actually accept without discount.
KM#A133.1 distinguishes this subtype from a closely related die variant catalogued separately under the same reign.
Perellos y Roccaful served as Grand Master from 1697 until his death in 1720, one of the longer tenures of the early modern period. The Maltese zecchino was deliberately modeled on the Venetian ducat — same fineness, near-identical weight — to ensure acceptability in Mediterranean trade networks where the ducat's reputation was irreplaceable. The Order's mint on Malta issued these not as a vanity exercise but out of genuine fiscal necessity: running a naval operation against Ottoman shipping required hard currency that merchants across the Levant would actually accept without discount.
KM#A133.1 distinguishes this subtype from a closely related die variant catalogued separately under the same reign.