The Assizes of Ariano were a series of laws promulgated in the summer of 1140 at Ariano, near Benevento in the Mezzogiorno, by Roger II of Sicily. Having recently pacified the peninsula, constantly in revolt, he had decided to make a move to more centralised government. The assizes established the large Sicilian bureaucracy and sought to maintain the feudal system under strict royal control. It contained forty clauses that touched on all possible topics of contemporary legal concern: private property, public property, the church, civil law, royal finances, the military. The work was advanced for its day, deriving its precepts not only from Norman and French, but also Muslim and Byzantine (especially Justinian), legal theories.