subject to the common courts. They were deprived also of judgement over heretics, prohibited from acquiring lands, and forced to sell inheritances. Also like the great dioceses and baronies, the cities were affected by the centralising laws which removed their powers and made them more directly subject to not only the king, but his ministers as well. Cities could not become communes, as many in Northern Italy had, and were prohibited from electing consuls or podestàs, on pain of sack and pillage. Like the baronage, the cities were deprived of rights of penal justice. These were transferred to the king and his magistrates alone. These magistrates or ministers became a more important class. Fewer and fewer noblemen served the king as more and more simple freemen were raised to power. The magistrates were elected for a year pending reaffirmation and received a salary from the state. This made them loyal to the king and his administration, for without it they were nothing. The great officers of the Regno were the ancient ammiratus ammiratorum, the grand protonotary (or logothete), great Chamberlain, great seneschal, great chancellor, great constable, and master justiciar. The last was the head of the Magna Curia, the court of the king (his curia regis) and the final court of appeal. The Magna Curia Rationum, a division of the curia, acted as an auditing department on the great bureaucracy. Other than this, there was a sort of parliament, consisting of not only the barons, but the universities and the landed commoners. It did not debate or rubber-stamp legislation, which was the king's to make and unmake, but merely received it and promulgated, giving its advice where it could. Economically, state monopolies were imposed on silk, iron, and grain. On the other hand, tariffs on trade within the Regno were abolished. The privileges granted previously to Pisa and Genoa were, however, rescinded. Weights and measures were uniformly regulated across the realm. Finally, the equality of all citizens before the law was affirmed. The Constitutions made much of reducing the power of the nobility and of following the Roman tradition of equality before the law: thus, all freemen, all citizens, were equals, in theory. Likewise, for the benefit of commoners, Frederick banned trial by ordeal, ordering his judges to use instead "the common methods of proof which have been introduced both by the ancient laws and by our constitutions." The Constitutions