Catania, Heliodorus the magician and the stone elephant

In the middle of Piazza del Duomo in Catania, an elephant of lava stone supports an obelisk in the Egyptian style. The people of Catania affectionately call it «u Liotru», and that name hides a tale of medieval magic. It is in fact the popular corruption of Heliodorus, a figure who according to tradition lived in the eighth century and whom legend remembers as the most powerful magician of the city. Around him are woven tales of wonders, of challenges to the Church and of a death at the stake.

The legend of Heliodorus

What we know of Heliodorus comes mainly from the «Life» of Saint Leo, bishop of Catania, a hagiographic text of Byzantine tradition. According to the story, Heliodorus was a Catanese nobleman who aspired to become bishop. Disappointed in his ambitions, he is said to have turned to the magic arts, making a pact with the devil. From then on he performed wonders of every kind: seemingly turning stones into gold, changing men into animals, deceiving merchants with false coins that returned by themselves to his pockets.

The best-known legend says that Heliodorus rode a stone elephant, brought to life by his arts, on which he travelled in an instant from Catania to Constantinople. Summoned by the emperor to answer for his deceptions, he is said to have escaped the guards several times, vanishing before the eyes of those present. For this reason, in popular imagination, the city's stone elephant has remained forever linked to his name.

The clash with Bishop Leo

The story culminates in the clash with Bishop Leo, called the Wonderworker for the miracles attributed to him. While the bishop was celebrating, Heliodorus is said to have entered the church to mock him and provoke the faithful. Leo then wrapped him in his own stole and led him onto a pyre lit in the square, stepping into it with him: the magician burned, while the saint came out unharmed. Tradition places the episode in the second half of the eighth century, but the date cannot be verified.

The episode is a classic hagiographic tale, staging the victory of faith over magic and of the lawful pastor over the usurper. In Catania, however, it has kept an extraordinary vitality, because it became attached to a concrete monument in plain sight of everyone, and to the character of a city used to living with the unpredictable forces of Etna.

The elephant, symbol of the city

The lava-stone elephant is much older than its present setting. Its origin is uncertain: some consider it Roman, others late antique or Byzantine. Already in the Middle Ages it was regarded as a protective talisman of the city, and the animal soon became the symbol of Catania, so much so that it still appears in its coat of arms. After the earthquake of 1693, which destroyed much of the city, the architect Giovanni Battista Vaccarini designed the present fountain, completed in 1736.

Vaccarini set the elephant on a base adorned with sculptures and placed on it a granite obelisk decorated with Egyptian-style figures, crowned by a cross and the symbols of Saint Agatha, the city's patron. In the Baroque heart of Catania different layers thus meet: the stone of Etna, an imagined Egypt, Byzantine hagiography and the cult of the saint. U Liotru, the magician turned into the fond name of a statue, recalls that the city has always lived with the mystery of its volcanic land.