This state of things would naturally arise when the emperor and the nobles lived in a state of mutual jealousy. Cp. Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, pp. 127-29, 139-40, 150, 176. Mr. Bryce does not attempt to clear up the dispute, but he recognises that the liberties of the cities would naturally "shoot up in the absence of the emperors and the feuds of the princes." And this is the view finally of Heinrich Leo: "Seit Otto bemerken wir eine auffallende Aenderung in der Politik der ganzen nördlichen Italiens" (_Geschichte von Italien_, 1829, i, 325; Bk. iv, Kap. i, § 1). Leo points out that the granting of exemptions to the north Italian cities came from the Ottos. "It was not, however," he goes on, "as it has been supposed we must assume, the blending of Roman _citizenship_ (which in the Lombard cities had never existed[508] in the form of commune or municipality [_Gemeinde_]) with the Lombard and German, but the blending of the survivors and the labourers, mostly of Roman descent, with the almost entirely German-derived free _Gemeinde_, through which the exemptions were obtained, and which gave a new aspect to the Italian cities" (pp. 326-27). Similarly Karl Hegel, after noting the analogies between Roman _collegia_ and German gilds, decides that "the German gilds were of native (_einheimischen_) origin, the same needs setting up the same order of institutions." He adds that the Christian Church first evoked in the gilds a real brotherly feeling. (_Städte und Gilden der germanischen Völker in Mittelalter_, 1891, Einleit. p. 10.) He admits, however, that the gilds, when first traced under Charlemagne, are forbidden under the name _Gildonia_, as oath-societies; and that they seem to have been unknown among the Franks (pp. 4, 6). § 3