Catalog
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| Issuer | Order of Malta (Knights of St. John) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1778 |
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| Orientation | Coin alignment ↑↓ |
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| Obverse description | Armoured bust of Grand Master Fra' Emmanuel de Rohan facing right, wearing elaborately decorated plate armour with a floral brooch at the shoulder and a powdered wig with curled locks. The effigy is rendered in high relief in a late Baroque style. The encircling legend reads 'F • EMMANUEL DE ROHAN M • M •' with the date 1778 placed in the exergue below the truncation. |
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| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Emmanuel de Rohan-Pölâtre served as Grand Master from 1775 until his death in 1797, and his tenure coincided with the Order's final decades of genuine sovereignty over Malta before Napoleon's bloodless seizure of the island in 1798. The 1778 date places this coin squarely in the period when de Rohan was codifying Maltese civil law — his 1784 legal code remains his most durable administrative achievement.
The .840 fineness is characteristic of the Order's gold scudi rather than the higher-purity standards of contemporary continental issues, a deliberate monetary policy tied to the Order's reliance on Mediterranean trade revenue and the costs of maintaining its naval fleet.