Abstract

This paper deals in the "vexata question" of the slave population in late Medieval cities; we tried to ascertain the size and the charateristics of this population group analyzing a source, which until now has been not, or very seldom used, i.e. the baptism registers. Though we are referring also to the recent edition of baptism listes of Gemona del Friuli (1379-1404) and Lucca (1444-1461), we are mainly using a data-base, which contains and organizes some 21,000 baptism registration preserved for the town of Pisa in the period between 1457 and 1509. We focused on the following questions: slaves' rate in comparison to the total resident population, difference between female and male rate, tipology of the slaves' names, arrivals' flow in the harbour of Pisa, slaves's owners, slaves' children. The results of our research seem to suggest, that baptism registrations have to be considered as the most complete and reliable serial source for studing the slaves' presence in the 15th century's Europe.