The stamp depicts the 70th Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Fra’ Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, who was elected in 1775 and remained in office until his death in 1797. The image is taken from a painting kept in the Magistral Palace, the Order’s institutional headquarters in Rome.

During his reign, the Order’s Chapter General, in 1776, ordered an updating of the regulations that had been in force until then into a single code, later called ‘Il Codice di Rohan’. The Code, written in Italian, remained in force as the primary source of Melitense law until the approval of the Order’s new Constitutional Charter in 1961, which indicated it as a supplementary source, only to be definitively repealed with the new Constitutional Charter issued in 2022.

The stamp bears the Grand Master’s coat of arms in the top right-hand corner, while in the bottom centre is the inscription ‘250° ANNIVERSARIO ELEZIONE GRAN MAESTRO FRA’ EMMANUEL DE ROHAN-POLDUC’.

The stamp is completed by the inscriptions ‘SOVRANO MILITARE ORDINE DI MALTA’ and ‘POSTE MAGISTRALI’, the emblem of the Order’s activities and the face value ‘€ 3.25’.

The stamp is joined along the right side with a vertical band, depicting the cover of the ‘Codice di Rohan’, in its original version, printed in Malta in 1782, kept in the Order’s Magistral Library in Rome.