Descoperiri monetare din necropola bisericii „Talpalari” din Iași
Coins found in the necropolis of the “Talpalari” Church in Iași

Summary/Abstract: During the archeological researches from 2016, in the necropolis of the “Talpalari” Church from Iași, 14 graves were unveiled. Only four of them contained coins (six) in their inventory. All these are Austrian denars, which were issued by the Habsburg emperors - Ferdinand I (three pcs.), Maximilian II (one pc.) and Rudolf II (two pcs.) - as kings of Hungary, in the mints of Kremnica (five pcs.) and Košice (one pc.). Although they circulated for a long time on the territory of Moldavia, these coins seem to date exclusively the part of the necropolis where they were discovered between the end of the 16th century and the first three decades of the 17th century. This cemetery may belong to a church before the one mentioned in the documents from the middle of the 17th century, as being founded by the great treasurer Iordache Cantacuzino. We tried to explain the population’s preference for Austrian coins of this kind, also attested in other necropolises in Moldavia, due to their particular iconography, which contains the image of the Virgin holding the baby in her arms, on the reverse. Finally, based on this rather small numismatic sample, we tried to make some brief clarifications about the role of coins in the funerary practices of the time (their position in the grave, the sex and age of the deceased with which they are associated, other artifacts from the inventory of the same graves or the significance of the numerous perforations)

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