RECONFIGURING ANIMAL SKINS61skin was stuffed and suspended for the purpose of frightening the
faithful and reminding them of the devilish things in life and death.^72
Both crocodiles and hippopotami were known in Italy at least since the
fourth century. A passage in the Storia dei Monaci by Rufino da Concor-
dia (345–410/411 ce) recounts that a monk called Beno chased away, with
the intensity of his gaze, a crocodile and a hippopotamus that were de-
stroying the land.^73 They became threatening animals in the imagination
of the time. It is therefore not a coincidence that the jaws of the crocodile
displayed in Ponte Nossa, as well as the mouth of the hippopotamus,
were set wide open. This iconography charges the evidential materiality
of the preserved animal body with the suggestion of evil powers. It is
plausible that discursively, within the context of the church in which it is
still displayed, the crocodile’s skin would have served a validating, epis-
temological purpose, materializing a dragonlike creature enmeshed in
FIGURE 1.2 Hippopotamus at the Museo di Storia Naturale, La Specola, Firenze,
Italy. 2011. Photograph courtesy of Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0.