The goal of the Catalog of Barons project is to build an easily accessible database from the Catalog of Barons, a twelfth century document that lists land holders in Norman Sicily and the number of soldiers of various kinds they would be able to contribute from their holdings should the need arise. Members of this team have the task of deconstructing the Latin and Italian texts and extracting their data (names, places, numbers of soldiers etc) as well as conducting background research to find as much information about the mentioned characters as possible. This work will allow scholars to analyze Norman Sicily in terms of demographics, to easily draw connections between important players in the period, track land and the transfers of holdings, and begin to understand the way power was shared and consolidated during this pivotal period of Sicilian history.
