to free themselves from imperial administration. Furthermore, the Italian territories of the Holy Roman Empire were distinctly different from the Germanic ones in socioeconomic and cultural aspects, and were not sympathetic to imperial power wielded by an authority of German lineage. Moreover, the nobility of the Italian territories dominated by the Empire were much less (and progressively less) involved in the administrative functions of the city-dominated regions, than the nobility were in German lands. Because of the frictions that arose in the 11th and the 12th centuries, the cities of Northern Italy experienced a rising ferment that led to the birth of a new form of local self-government based on an elective collegial body with administrative, judicial, and security functions, and which in turn designated city consuls: the medieval commune. This institutional evolution was contemporary with the investiture struggle. When a city's bishop, who had traditionally exerted a strong influence on the civil matters of the municipality, became largely preoccupied with the contest between Empire and Papacy, the citizens were stimulated, and in some ways obliged, to seek a form of self-government that could act independently in times of serious difficulty. Citizens became increasingly aware of the public affairs of their own municipality and disinclined to accept the ecclesiastical and feudal structures, with their rigid and hierarchical management of the government. The change that led to a collegial management of public administration was rooted in the Lombard domination of Northern Italy; this Germanic people was in fact accustomed to settling the most important questions (which were usually of military nature) through an assembly presided over by the king and composed of the most valiant soldiers, the "gairethinx" or "arengo". City consuls generally came from the increasingly dominant (merchant and professional) classes of a city; although the duration of a consul's mandate was only one year, and there was a certain turnover of individuals in the positions, a communal administration sometimes amounted to a coterie of leading families that shared municipal power in oligarchic fashion. In any case the northern Italian cities gradually ceased to recognize feudal institutions, which now seemed outdated. Moreover, previous emperors, for various vicissitudes, adopted for a certain period an attitude of indifference towards the issues of Northern Italy, taking more care to establish relations that provided for supervision of the Italian situation rather than the effective exercise of power. As a consequence, imperial power did not