Merzario,[92] giving as his authority Michele Amari,[93] brings forward as a suggestive fact, that precisely at the time of the Norman occupation, there was a large emigration into Sicily of members of the Lombard or Comacine Guild. Amari thinks that the feudal government of the Normans at that time did not allow their subjects to emigrate from land to land (excepting of course their armies for purposes of conquest), while in North Italy feudalism was going out, and with the establishment of republics the movement of the inhabitants was freer. "This," he says, "accounts for the so-called colonies of Lombards, which came to Sicily at that time, but of which, unfortunately, we have no reliable historical evidence." These Lombardo-Siculan colonies, however, have been clearly traced by an Italian writer, Lionardo Vigo, in his _Monografia critica delle colonie Lombardo sicule_.[94] He has proved that there were four Lombard colonies in Sicily. That the first went down with Ardoin and Mania, between 1002, when, on Otho's death, Ardoin was elected King of Italy, and his retirement to S. Benigno in 1013 after his long struggle with Henry II. The second was during the Norman conquest of Sicily in 1061; the third later in the century, at the time of the union of the Norman and Swabian dynasties; and the fourth about 1188 under the Emperor Frederic,--this colony was led by Addo di Camerana. The first two colonies left no lasting traces in the island, but the third founded the town of Maniace, and the last planted a settled colony which has left its mark, not only in the language, but in the many Lombard place-names. Thus there are in Sicily villages named Carona, Gagliano, Novara, Palazzolo, Padernò, Piazza, Sala, and Scopello, all of which are names of older places in the Comacine territory. Another name, "Sanfratelli" (the holy brethren), is very suggestive of the patron saints of the Lombard Guild, the "Quattro Incoronati." It is in this district precisely that Signor Vigo finds a special language, which has no affinity with Sicilian, or central Italian, and which he describes as a "hybrid, bastard language; a decayed Longobardic, only intelligible to those who use it; a frightful jargon and perfectly satanic tongue."