Today, HRH Prince Gharios El Chemor of Ghassan Al-Numan VIII was notified of his appointment as an effective member of the Italian Heraldic Council.

The Italian Heraldic Council was founded on 18 November 1948. The functions of the College of Heralds of the Kingdom of Italy having been abolished following the fourteenth transitory and final disposition of the Constitution of the Republic of Italy (“The law declares the suppression of the College of Heralds”), the Italian Heraldic Council set itself the following principal aims: checking the historic legitimacy of concession titles; establishing the validity of geological trees; carrying out research of a historic and genealogical nature; collecting coats of arms, in order to safeguard the historic heritage of the Italian nobility.

In 1966, the head office was moved to Milan and, in 1993, Don Francesco Maria Mariano Duke of Otranto became the Grand Master, notifying the Ministry for Education and the Ministry for the Interior that the Institute “aims to operate as a cultural body in the training and promoting sphragistics, genealogy and diplomatic studies in the widest sense linked to heraldry, as subjects which require a fundamental revitalisation”.

In 1994, the Marquises Arardo Maria and Renato Maria Spreti – sons of the Marquis Vittorio Spreti, promoter and director of the Italian Historic and Noble Encyclopaedia – granted the Italian Heraldic Council the exclusive right to transpose the text of the Italian Historic and Noble Encyclopaedia into a data bank operating on any type of magnetic support.

On 19 April 1995, the Association, in agreement with the aforesaid sole heirs of the Marquis Vittorio Spreti, assumed the name Italian Heraldic Council – Marquis Vittorio Spreti Institute; on the same occasion, the Duke of Otranto became the President of the association and the head office was moved to its final home in Padua.

After the death, in 2000, of the Marquis Arardo Maria, the position of Vice-President of the Council was taken over by the Marquis Renato Maria Spreti, second son of Vittorio, whose experience, coordination and spiritual as well as material guidance, provides us with particular, invincible stimuli.

Ever since its foundation, the Institute has pursued the aim of scientifically encouraging studies in heraldry and genealogy, as well as providing advice for the granting or recognition of titles, coats of arms and predicates of nobility, even in the realm of jurisdiction and the law, in Italy and abroad; this is done in order to safeguard the history of the homeland and to seek and preserve heraldic, noble, genealogical, bourgeois and chivalrous values.

Among other things, the Council deals with:

* the illustration of noble and bourgeois coats of arms and the realisation of family coats of arms ex novo, with respective registration by notary, filing and possible publication in the Official Gazette (as well as recording in the Italian Grand Armorial Register);
* etymological studies, with particular reference to the etymological origin of surnames;
* carrying out formalities for the admission to orders of chivalry;
* the publication of editorial works of particular historic and heraldic interest, including the Iconographic Archive of Orders of Chivalry and the Italian Grand Armorial Register, etc.
* the issue of opinions pro veritate, of a technical heraldic nature, and, for services provided by the Higher Institute of Noble Law, of a chivalrous and noble nature;
* all types of investigations in the national, municipal and parish registers, and wherever may be considered necessary for the greater accuracy of research.

The Italian Heraldic Council can count on the interest and loyalty of over 16,000 clients or appreciators, and has delegations in many countries, including the United States of America, Spain, the Principality of Monaco, France, Austria, Japan, Slovakia, Poland, Russia, the Ukraine, Armenia, China, the United Arab Emirates, etc.

More about the Council HERE