Alexandru Pînzar, Suceava
During the first years of this century, some coin dealers from U.S.A. sold, on Internet auctions, individual coins and lots of Moldavian medieval petty coins, all sharing the same features, such as the crown above the traditional shield on the reverse. It is obvious that all these coins came from a big hoard (hundreds in number), found probably in the Ukraine, in the area of Cetatea Albă (Bjelgorod-Dnestrovskij), probably not long before the first coins were released on the market.
Some 100 coins were acquired by collectors from U.S.A., Romania and Moldavia, all of them displayed in a website dedicated to Romanian medieval coins: http://romaniacoins.ancients.info, http://monederomanesti.cimec.ro. The hoard was composed of petty coinage struck by Stephen, the son of Alexander, soon before the middle of the 15th century (the type 514 on page 70 in the catalogue of the Romanian medieval coins, "Monede şi bancnote româneşti" by O. Luchian, Gh. Buzdugan and C. C. Oprescu, 1977). All the coins show no traces of wear (excepting one coin in the lot of 100) and the silver wash is preserved on many coins. Only two very similar varieties of the type are present in the hoard, both being struck by dies which share a common fault of the punch used to struck the lilies in the die. The conclusion is straightforward: this is a mint or "banker" hoard, which includes large amount of coins, of identical types, which can be supposed to have been concealed soon after leaving the mint with no or very little “contamination” of local circulating medium. These characteristics make it very significant for metrological studies.
A lot of 24 coins, 22 supposed from the hoard, is analyzed. The statistical data, the average weight around 0.335 g, the median of 0.34 g and the standard deviation of 0.063 g show a coin struck in low-silver alloy, according to a weight standard around 0.34 g. This standard is similar to the one used in Poland in the same period to strike the deniers (0.35 g and 98‰ ÷ 217‰ silver finesses).
This conclusion contradicts the traditional metrological approach to the Moldavian petty coinage, which assumed a monetary unit named "groat" having around 0.90 g legal weight and a multiple of one and a half "groat" of 1.35 g legal weight, thus the petty coins being half of the "groat", having around 0.45 g legal weight. This theory is almost 100 years old, developed in a period in which the first issues of petty coins in Moldavia were not known. Indeed, these first issues of Peter I (c. 1375-1391), although very rare today (only 5 specimens recorded), are all around only 0.22 g in weight, while the main type of coin issued by Peter, the "groat", followed closely the evolution of the Russian kwartniks issued in Lwow during the years 1370 and 1382, from 1.12 g to 0.85 g.
In Poland, during Casimir’s III reign, the groat, newly introduced, weighted 3.1 g in silver of 875‰ purity, divided in 2 kwartniks of 1.55 g, 16 deniers and 32 obols. During his reign and those of the next kings, the coinage was slowly debased. So, from a Cracovian mark, weighing 196.26 g were struck 768 deniers during the reign of Casimir III and 864 deniers during Wladyslaw II Jagello, thus giving a standard weight for the deniers between 0.2562 and 0.2278 g. It is obvious that the Moldavian petty coins issued by Peter I followed the same standard, thus being deniers in weight and in value, and not half of the Moldavian "groats" (equivalent to kwartniks). Probably the ratio to the Moldavian "groat" was not 1:8 as initially was in Poland, but, more probably, 1:6, as will be shown in the next lines.
The similarities between the monetary standards in Poland and Moldavia are more obvious when analyzing the two linked reforms, the one of Wladyslaw II Jagello in Poland, who introduced the ternaries (the quarter groat), divided into 3 deniers, thus giving the denier-kwartnik ratio of 1:6, and the one of Alexander I in Moldavia, who issued, around 1408, the Moldavian "double groat", equivalent to the Polish kwartnik, the Moldavian "groat", equivalent to the Polish ternarius and Moldavian "half groat", equivalent to denier.
In conclusion, at least some issues of the Moldavian petty coinage struck in silver alloys were equivalent to the Polish deniers and had a 1:6 ratio to the Moldavian "groat". Of course, some petty coinage issues were struck in metal having very low contents in silver, or having only traces of silver. This is an unsolved (till now) problem, a possible clue which can reveal the true value of these coins is a hoard found in Suceava, consisting in 351 Hungarian quartings and 6 Moldavian "half groats".
The paper ends showing that future metrological studies may reveal other weight standards for different issues of the Moldavian petty coinage struck in silver alloys up to the middle of the 15th century. Their inspiration can be other denominations struck in Poland or Lithuania, such as the Lithuanian double denier (of 0.41 g legal weight and 475‰ silver finesses) or it can be a local standard of half the weight for the Moldavian "groat". Only the study of more hoards will solve this problem, revealing a system which today may seem difficult to understand, but which was coherent and well-structured in these times.