The earliest account of the monster's existence comes from the diarist Sebastiano di Branca Tedallini, who recorded on March 8 that news of a strange infant's birth had reached Pope Julius II in Rome.
It was common practice for malformed infants, especially those with a low chance of survival in medieval Europe, to be abandoned and left to die by starvation; this was swiftly carried out in Ravenna on the order of the Pope.