VV(11):April 15th

[David Morris]

http://store.yahoo.com/britishbooks/2149.html

The Pope's Rhinoceros
By Lawrence Norfolk
753 Pages (Paperback)

In February 1516, a Portuguese ship sank with the loss of all hands a mile 
off the coast of Italy. The Nossa Senbora da Ajuda had sailed 14,000 miles 
from the Indian kingdom of Gujarat. Her mission: to deliver a rhinoceros to 
the Pope.

The Pope's Rhinoceros tells the stories that culminate in this bizarre 
incident. Salvestro, an ex-mercenary fleeing from the wars raging south of 
the Alps, is the hero of the tale. He has returned to his birthplace on the 
Baltic island of Usedom, where a sect of secretive monks are planning their 
first pilgrimage in 200 years. Their journey will take themselves and 
Salvestro back across the Alps to Rome, Where Leo X, the 'pleasure-loving 
Pope', holds court. Here the Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal compete for His 
Holiness's favours as he divides up the New World between them. A 
rhinoceros, unseen in Europe since antiquity, seems the perfect bribe to 
secure this whimsical Pope's approval. But where is this near-mythical beast 
to be found?

Ranging from the herring colonies of the Baltic Sea to a fly-blown port in 
India, from a tribe hidden in the West African rain forest to the atrocities 
committed in an obscure town in Tuscany, Lawrence Norfolk's second novel 
holds up the true history of the rhinoceros as a mirror to the fantasies and 
obsessions of the Renaissance. Why did Albrecht Dürer add a fictitious 
second horn to the rhinoceros in his woodcut of 1515? How did an anal 
fistula enable Giovanni di Medici to become Pope Leo X? The quest draws in 
Salvestro, the reclusive monks, Rome's corrupt cardinals and courtesans, her 
duelling ambassadors and decaying nobility, and the ancient peoples of 
Europe, Africa and the Indies. All are blind to their different fates, and 
all their fates are bound to the rhinoceros. Set on the brink of the 
Reformation, The Pope's Rhinoceros is a parable of an age rushing to its 
crisis.



>So, turning back to Chapter Six for a moment, Benny is said
>to have met the Playboys at the Feast of San' Ercole dei
>Rinoceronti, which comes on the Ides of March or March 15th,
>the old tax due date. [...] This seems
>to be a Pynchon day. What it alludes to, I have no idea.
>There are several Saints, RC and other Orthodox Church
>Saints that are candidates by name and date, but the
>Rhinoceroses don't seem to be associated with any of these.
>Someone said the Pope's rhinoceros, but how does that fit in
>here?
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