The central point in the government lay, as in the states beyond the Alps, in the _curia_ of feudal vassals and particularly in its more permanent nucleus of household officials and immediate advisers of the king. But whereas in the other parts of western Europe the feudal baronage still prevailed exclusively and gave way but slowly before the growth of specialized training and competence, the professional element was present in the Sicilian _curia_ from an early period in the logothetes and emirs which Roger II had taken over from the earlier organization. The chancery, with its Latin, Greek, and Arabic branches, was inevitably a more complicated institution than in the other western kingdoms, and its documents imitated Byzantine and papal usage, even in externals. At one point, however, it shows close parallelisms with the Anglo-Norman chancery, namely in the free use of those _mandata_ or administrative writs which are still rare in the secular states of the twelfth century; and if we remember that their employment constitutes the surest index of the efficiency of a mediæval administrative system, we must conclude, what is evident in other ways, that the most vigorous governments of the period were the two Norman kingdoms. In judicial matters the parallel is also instructive. Here a professional class had existed in the south from the outset as an inheritance from the Byzantine period, 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_.