The elephant who went to see the Pope

The Pope was given an elephant, and the elephant knelt before him.

The story

In 1514 King Manuel I sent an embassy to Rome with gifts for the new pope, Leo X. The main gift was a young white elephant from India, about four years old. At the audience the elephant knelt before the Pope and trumpeted. Leo X was delighted and gave him a home in the Vatican. The elephant was called Hanno: he marched in festive processions, poets wrote verses about him, and all Rome came running to see him.

Next The king pitted a rhino against an elephant. The elephant fled.— The Rhino and the Elephant

Context

The embassy was led by the navigator Tristão da Cunha. The elephant entered Rome in March 1514. Smithsonian Magazine retells an episode from the audience: the elephant filled his trunk with water and sprayed everyone present, the Pope included, who found the whole show delightful. Hanno lived in Rome for two years. In the summer of 1516 he fell ill, his doctors gave him a purgative laced with gold, and on 8 June he died. The Pope was at his side. Leo X wrote the epitaph himself, and Raphael painted the elephant on a wall in his memory; the fresco has not survived. Hanno was buried in the Belvedere Courtyard in the Vatican. Manuel wanted to please the Pope once more and sent him the very rhinoceros that had frightened an elephant in Lisbon in 1515. The rhino never reached Rome: the ship sank off the coast of Italy.