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 abundant opportunity to keep one government informed of the administrative experiments of the other.

In general, however, the Sicilian monarchy was of a far more absolute and Oriental type than is found among the northern Normans or anywhere else in western Europe. The king's court, with its harem and eunuchs, resembled that of the Fatimite caliphs; his ideas of royal power were modelled upon the empire of Constantinople. The only contemporary portrait of King Roger which has reached us, the mosaic of the church of the Martorana at Palermo, represents him clothed in the dalmatic of the apostolic legate and the imperial costume of Byzantium, and receiving the crown directly from the hands of Christ; and a similar portrayal of the coronation of King William II shows that the scene was meant to be typical of the divine right of the king, responsible to no earthly authority. Theocratic in principle, the Sicilian monarchy drew its inspiration from the law-books of Justinian as well as from the living example on the eastern throne. The series of laws or assizes issued by King Roger naturally reflects the composite character of the Norman state. The mass of local custom is not superseded, the feudal obligations of the vassals are clearly recognized, influences of canon law and Teutonic custom are clearly traceable, indeed the northern conception of the king's peace may have been their starting-point; but the great body of these decrees flows directly from the Roman law, as preserved