500-year-old gold coins discovered in a German monastery were ‘hastily hidden’ during a ‘dangerous situation’
by ImportantReaction260
500-year-old gold coins discovered in a German monastery were ‘hastily hidden’ during a ‘dangerous situation’
by ImportantReaction260
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Archaeologists in Germany have uncovered a handful of 500-year-old gold coins buried among the ruins of a medieval monastery.
Known as Himmelpforten, the Augustinian Hermit monastery housed monks from its founding in 1253 into the 16th century. The archaeologists think the four coins were “hastily hidden” by one of the monks in 1525 during an uprising in which farmers stormed the monastery in Wernigerode, a town in central Germany, according to a translated article in Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper.
Classified as guilders (guldens), a type of currency used during the Holy Roman Empire, the coins include one that was minted in Frankfurt before 1493, during the reign of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick III; another coin minted in Schwabach, outside Nuremberg, sometime between 1486 and 1495; and two coins produced in Bonn by the Archdiocese of Cologne around 1480