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 and it early makes its appearance in the curia in the person of a group of justices who in time seem completely to absorb the judicial functions of the larger body. At the same time the Norman barons were utilized for the royal justiciars which King Roger established throughout all parts of his kingdom. Parallel to these provincial justices ran provincial chamberlains, and over them there were later established master justices and master chamberlains for the great districts of Apulia and Capua, all subject to the central curia.

The fiscal system was especially characteristic. Roger's biographer tells us that the king spent his spare time in close supervision of the receipts and expenditures of his government, and that everything relating to the accounts was carefully kept in writing. Beginning with his reign we have documentary evidence of a branch of the curia, called in Arabic diwan, in Greek σέκρετου, and in Latin either duana or secretum, and acting as a central financial body for the whole kingdom. It kept voluminous registers, called in Arabic defêtir, and as its officers and clerks were largely Saracens, it seems plainly to go back to Saracenic antecedents. There are, however, some traces on the mainland of careful descriptions of lands and serfs like those which it extracted from its records in Sicily under the name of plateæ, so that Byzantine survivals should also be taken into account in studying the origin of the institution. Indeed this whole system presupposes elabo-