A Who's Who of Your Ancestral Saints

For anyone interested in his or her own genealogical links to medieval Europe and early Christianity, Alan Koman's new book offers an extraordinary opportunity. For the first time, the lives of 275 early European saints are retold and accompanied by lineages connected those saints to twenty-four of the great men and women of medieval Europe. Today, those twenty-four men and women have hundreds of millions of living descendants. The historical period covered by this work is vast. From St. Gregory "the Illuminator" (b. 256-d. 326) to St. Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster (b. ca 1277-d. 22 March 1322), the saints presented in this book span ten centuries. Some were great men, such as Alfred "the Great," Bernard of Clairvaux, and Charlemagne; others, such as Elizabeth of Hungary, Marie of Brabant, and Odilia, led lives that are just as moving today as in their own time.