Asper - John of Lastic

John of Lastic served as Grand Master during one of the Order's most precarious stretches on Rhodes, with Ottoman pressure mounting steadily after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The asper denomination was the Order's workhorse coinage, circulating alongside Venetian and Byzantine issues in the eastern Mediterranean trade networks that the Hospitallers both depended on and actively taxed.

Lastic's tenure ended with his death in 1454, the same year Mehmed II was consolidating control over former Byzantine territories — a proximity that gives this modest silver piece an uncomfortable historical timestamp.