You misunderstood me. I've only called them Guelph merlons because it's easier to type than "regular merlons." I do not think anyone considered them marked in any way or related to the "Guelph" faction until the 19th century.
As for the battle, the many of the paintings on Wikipedia show swallowtail merlons when there were none, which means there is a chance the painter who drew them correctly knew what they actually looked like. But that's irrelevant. The more important point is that all those other painters should have got it right unless it did not actually matter to them. Perhaps they just thought the swallowtail merlons looked cool. What I tried to illustrate to Stolfi is just what you said: that they almost certainly did not assign the merlons a political meaning when even painters from the same location depicted them in such a coin-toss way.
In armorial heraldry, there are various examples of the use of embattled lines where the merlons are clearly swallow-tailed. Obviously, this held some meaning.
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I've made some updates to include photos and both web and corpus summarise for buildings.. You can also show or hide different kinds, so you can just see the ones with clear 15th century provenance for example..
Hi Ed, there's something I still don't understand about your map.
"Where building authenticity is documented, these swallowtail merlons are overwhelmingly 19th–20th-c. reconstructions. The manuscript depictions may be more reliable evidence for medieval merlon form than the standing buildings. Absent buildings show as “undetermined” (no reliable source found), not as original."
Entries are only added to the map when we are near-certain that they had swallowtail merlons by 1450. These are considered good evidence - that's kind of the whole idea of the map.
(14-06-2026, 03:29 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Ed, there's something I still don't understand about your map.
"Where building authenticity is documented, these swallowtail merlons are overwhelmingly 19th–20th-c. reconstructions. The manuscript depictions may be more reliable evidence for medieval merlon form than the standing buildings. Absent buildings show as “undetermined” (no reliable source found), not as original."
Entries are only added to the map when we are near-certain that they had swallowtail merlons by 1450. These are considered good evidence - that's kind of the whole idea of the map.
And that's what I thought, but I've run deep research on 3 different systems, and this seems to be the consensus. I'm also actively looking up against Voynich Ninja so if something is mentioned it picks it up.. so always possible that I'm mistaken and I've missed a reference, but this seems to be the real state of it... Of course if it's completely balderdash, then I will update
Every entry is vetted and added after consensus had been reached. If there are issues with specific entries, those should be removed.
(14-06-2026, 04:47 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Every entry is vetted and added after consensus had been reached. If there are issues with specific entries, those should be removed.
Always happy to triple check...
(14-06-2026, 04:47 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Every entry is vetted and added after consensus had been reached. If there are issues with specific entries, those should be removed.
Here's an example... Sperlinga in Sicily, my map has as restored, and a quick Google search shows this You are not allowed to view links.
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See final paragraph...
Excellent, so this needs to be removed from the map. (I see that I added the Sicilian examples in one swoop 5 years ago, with substandard control). The goal is to have only those entries left that are certain enough.
(14-06-2026, 07:33 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Excellent, so this needs to be removed from the map. (I see that I added the Sicilian examples in one swoop 5 years ago, with substandard control). The goal is to have only those entries left that are certain enough.
I don't guarantee that all mine are right, but might be a useful cross check...