Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

Sicily boasts the world's best genealogical records, revealing the deep roots of a Sicilian identity and facilitating the construction of many pedigrees into the fifteenth century. Based on the author's thirty years of experience as a foremost expert in the field, this book is the first complete guide ever published in English dedicated exclusively to Sicilian genealogical research.

Topics range from parochial, civil and feudal records to DNA haplotyping, religion, rural life, cuisine, ethnography, coats of arms, surname origins and Jewish genealogy, with insightful information on historiography, epistemology and research strategies. Its reading list is a definitive canon constituting a syllabus for Sicilian studies.

This is the book professional genealogists consult when researching in Sicily.

Louis Mendola

Louis Mendola is one of Sicily’s foremost medievalists, and one of the very few whose work is known beyond Italian borders. His first scholarly paper (on the Battle of Benevento of 1266) was published in 1985; others consider such topics as the history of the medieval Normans in Sicily. He wrote the first book covering the entire seven-century history of the Kingdom of Sicily, and the first English translations of two chronicles of the thirteenth century. Having researched in Italy, Britain, Spain, Germany, France and the Vatican, he has been consulted by The History Channel, the BBC and The New York Times. Read by millions internationally, his online articles have made him one of the most popular Sicilian historians of the present century.