Burial grounds between ecclesiastical and lay administration in 16th – and early 17th-century Cluj: churchyard archaeology in Farkas Street and its historical context

The funerary spaces of late medieval and early modern Cluj can be examined from the perspectives of historical urbanism and social practices, taking into account the theological visions shaped by the Reformation and the sanitary crises, which prompted a succession of administrative rulings recorded after the mid-16th century on these issues. A trend toward the exclusion of burial grounds from densely inhabited areas and their progressive relocation to the urban periphery emerges. This process was gradual and involved intermediate phases marked by the (re)establishment of burial spaces in non-residential or temporarily abandoned zones, at the margins of the fortified perimeter. In this context, a first designated alternative to the interior cemetery surrounding the parish church surfaces from the decisions of the urban leadership: the complex of the Franciscan convent on Farkas (now Mihail Kogălniceanu) Street, which had been abandoned and partially demolished since the 1550s. Recent archaeological investigations within the cemetery located west of the church (in present-day Jean Calvin Square) allow for a reassessment of the area’s land use during the friary’s existence and after the expulsion of the mendicant order, up until the mid-17th century, with the churchyard cemetery as the main focus. The research of a cemetery section, active from the turn of the 16th century until, at least, the first decades of the following one, indicates that the area continued to be used for interments even after it had been vacated by the Observant Franciscans, in the context of subsequent changes in the lay and ecclesiastic administrations. These findings allow for a revisiting of the discussion on the takeover of the mendicant complex by the urban authorities, private residents, the Jesuit order, and the Calvinist Protestants, while highlighting their varied approaches to this ‘intra moenia’ burial ground. From a funerary perspective, the interpretation of archaeological evidence and archival records seeks to contribute relevant data to the analysis of the long-term process by which new social practices associated with burial spread within the changing theological and urban framework.