Central European origin

[-JKP-]

I spent about 6 or 7 years gathering maps and maplike information when I was trying to figure out if the VMS "map" was meant to be a specific place.

While doing this, I paid attention to whether there were windmills, water wheels, Ghibelline merlons, domes, onion domes, footed towers, bartizans, saddleback towers, and other architectural features (that might relate to the VMS) in manuscripts, sculptures, mosaics, paintings, and other works of art (or textual notes), ones that might help identify certain times and places in medieval society.

I also paid attention to saddlebacks, domes, and Ghibelline merlons when they showed up  in non-map drawings, and made a note of where the manuscript originated and who made it (if known).

As far as I can tell, the tug-of-war between Rome and the Holy Roman Empire (Vienna/Prague) was still very much alive in the 14th and early 15th centuries. The political implications of the Ghibelline merlons were not restricted to the Ghibellines and Guelphs—they represented the schisms between the two big powers. Even though this affected a lot of people, these merlons do not seem to have been especially common. A very large number of the towers and walls that have these merlons are post-medieval rebuilds, and the distinctive merlons are not included in earlier drawings.

Medieval maps and drawings are not entirely literal (and many of them are completely made up, especially those that accompany medieval travelogues), but some illustrators (usually local ones) did a reasonable job of representing a place.


This is not something that can be determined in 6 or 7 years (it would take many researchers many decades to do it), but as far as I can tell, these merlons did not spread very broadly until around the 16th century, when they had become more decorative than political. Even though it persisted for several more centuries in one form or another, the Holy Roman Empire was breaking up into "islands" by that time.