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The author looks into the legal status of children born to slave mothers and their masters in Venetian colonies. Female slaves were more highly prized than male slaves, pointing to the value associated with procreation and concubinage in Venetian colonies.

In 2014 an archaeological area dated between the 17th and the 18th centuries and located in the historical downtown of the city of Forlì (FC), in Northern Italy, offered the possibility to retrieve and study a huge amount of burials, some of which contained perinatal individuals buried in the same grave with adults. The location of this archaeological site (identified as “Forlì Campus”), near the area of the ancient city hospital, generated the idea that this site could have been the hospital cemetery in the 18th century. The possibility to study the bisome burials, represented by an adult and a perinatal individual, coupled with the period to which they date, make this sample of particularly interest. In fact, since prehistoric times, pregnancy, labor, birth and obstetrics have been women’s field.

During the restoration of the church of the Conversion of St. Paul, located in Roccapelago a small village of the Emilian Apennines, it was found a lost chamber containing the remains of over 300 individuals who lived between the sixteenth and seventeenth century AD. The classic anthropological study was supported by the analysis of parish records, which showed a significant percentage of twin births. An interesting indicator to highlight complications during delivery, were the recordings of “emergency baptisms”. The frequency of this particular type of rite on births with only one born in Roccapelago, is 3,02%. It’s instead of the 13,73% the administration of emergency baptisms on twin births. The frequent perinatal deaths, show that it was risky the moment of birth, any complications that could arise during the phase of expulsion, could be lethal. Emergency baptism phenomenon is a clear example: none of the twins who received this particular sacrament is survived.

La ricerca è scaturita dalla lettura di una fonte agiografica risalente ai primi anni del VII secolo, che mi ha indotto a studiare alcune serie d’immagini e oggetti batracomorfi ossia figurazioni del rospo e della rana. È bene tenere presente fin da subito che, prima dell’introduzione del nuovo sistema tassonomico di Linneo (1758), le famiglie dei bufonidi e delle ranadae non venivano chiaramente distinte all’interno dell’ordine degli anfibi anuri, e invero ancor oggi gli zoologi ne discutono. Secondo una consolidata tradizione di studi eruditi, rane e rospi hanno potuto veicolare dal mondo antico (o addirittura dalla Preistoria) alla modernità una costellazione di significati inerenti al campo semantico della fecondità e della gravidanza, e dei connessi incidenti di percorso. Le cose sono invero assai più complesse: la natura interdisciplinare di queste riflessioni, ancorate all’antropologia medica e alla storia delle immagini, farà emergere i rischi e gli abusi del simbolismo iconico nel campo che mi è più familiare, quello della storia culturale. This paper presents a synthesis of my recent researches inspired by hagiographic and iconographic sources. The perusal of some illustrated toad and frog representations will follow, keeping in mind that before Linnaeus the bufonidae and ranadae families were not clearly differentiated within the anuran amphibian order and even now the matter is under discussion among specialists. According to well-established scholarship, starting from Pre-history and all the way to modern times these animal symbols have been handing down a web-net of meanings concerning fertility and pregnancy, as well as the risks therein connected.