For decades, no one inquired further into the provenance of the elephant skeleton buried beneath the Vatican, until in the 1980s and ’90s, the Smithsonian's Historian Emeritus, Silvio Bedini, uncovered the elephant's history. He published the results of his research in 1997, in "The Pope's Elephant", the most thorough study to date of the elephant that lived in the Cortile del Belvedere.
His name was Annone—or, once anglicized, Hanno—and he belonged to Pope Leo X, who was elected pope in 1513. Hanno was not just a pet: He played a part in the politics of Portuguese expansion and made a cameo in the Protestant Reformation. But above all, Hanno was a wonder. No elephant had been in Italy since the Roman empire fell, and the entire country clamored to get a glimpse of him. [...]
At the time that Giovanni di Lorenzo de'Medici (of the famous Florentine Medici family) became Pope Leo X, the Portuguese king, Manuel I, was working to solidify his country's hold on the spice trade. The Portuguese expansion over the oceans had threatened the monopoly that overland traders had held, and Egypt, which had long benefited from that monopoly, was pushing the Pope to pull back on Portugal. Egyptian leaders did have leverage: They controlled Jerusalem and could destroy Christian holy sites if the Pope sided against them.
It was traditional for Christian rulers to send a gift to a new pope upon his election, and Manuel I knew that this was a political opportunity, as well. He could ask for money, to expand his fleet of ships and artillery, and he could obtain the Pope's blessing for Portuguese expansionism. He carefully planned what he would send—textiles, a gold chalice, a brocade altar cover, and other treasures wrought with gold and jewels. He sent a cheetah, leopards, parrots, strange dogs, and a Persian horse. And he sent Hanno.
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