Description
The present publication is partly a transcription of the first Gozitan Church register found at the Archives of the Bishop’s Curia in Gozo, presented here alphabetically according to the four sections of Baptisms, Confirmations, Marriages and Deaths, and partly a study of the same. It includes an Introduction on both the register and the historical background focusing on the 1551 Turkish invasion of Gozo, and commentaries on the four sections of the register, supporting them with statistical information as well as historical notes. This work abounds with cross-references from one section to another, supplying information where lacunae exist in the original. It was carried out as a service to the Diocese of Gozo, thereby facilitating the reading of a manuscript which dates more than four centuries, and which is almost illegible in some places. ‘The earliest Church register in Gozo’ is an important book of reference for genealogists and historians, and augurs a breakthrough in Maltese and Gozitan palaeographic research.
