VATICAN CORNER
Workmen digging in the Va can’s Belvedere Courtyard, in February 1962 discovered pieces of a large jaw bone and a large tooth. They thought they had found a dinosaur, but the bones were not fossilized and when examined were found to be from an elephant. For decades there was no explanation of the find until the historian Silvio Bedini in the 1980s and 1990s uncovered the story of the elephant named Hanno who belonged to Pope Leo X. No elephant had been in Italy since the fall of the Roman Empire many centuries earlier. Hanno came from India by way of Portugal, and was a political gift from the Portuguese king. It was traditional for Chris an rulers to send a gift when a new pope was elected. At that me the Portuguese had been expanding the spice trade over the oceans and had brought back strange creatures from across the globe. The ocean trade threatened the land trade routes controlled by Egyptians traders. In a trade war, the Portuguese were looking for the Pope’s favor, so upon Pope Leo X’s election, King Manuel I of Portugal, in 1514, sent many gifts to the new Pope. There was a gold chalice, a brocade altar cover, gold and jeweled items, a cheetah, leopards, parrots, strange dogs, a Persian horse and Hanno a four year old white elephant. The slow march Hanno made on the 70 mile trek from the Italian coast to Rome left a path of destruction, not from Hanno, for he was not such a large elephant, but from the great crowds that came to see him and the other strange animals. The people trampled fields, crashed roofs and broke through walls just to see him. Finally reaching Rome, Hanno bowed before Pope Leo, then trumpeted three mes and drank water and sprayed it on everyone. The Pope thought the performance was delighful and Hanno quickly became a celebrity in Rome and a favorite of Pope Leo. He had a special house built for Hanno on the Belvedere Courtyard and the people of Rome were allowed to visit Hanno on weekends. On occasion, Hanno would parade through Rome, but that didn’t always go so well. Trumpets and drums frightened Hanno and he would eventually throw his rider. Another me he stampeded a%er a cannon went off and injured some of his fans. Another me the crowds were so ght that noblemen on horseback ended up crushing viewers. Hanno lived 3 years in Rome but eventually started having trouble breathing and showed he was in pain. The doctors determined that he was constipated and used a common treatment at the me, a suppository with a high dose of gold, which quickly killed him. The Pope was devastated and arranged for Hanno to be buried beneath the Belvedere Courtyard, he wrote the epitaph and commissioned a mural commemorating Hanno, insisting that it be drawn by the ar st Raphael himself. The original no longer exists, but studies of the mural do. Hanno became a symbol for the excesses, frivolities and improprieties of the Pope’s reign and Mar n Luther used Hanno as the subject of one of his first published criticisms of the Pope. Hanno’s tusks had been removed and stored elsewhere, but the rest of his bones s ll lay under the courtyard today.
Sources: atlasobscura.com, npr.org, weeklystandard.com