The Mozarabic Cardinal

EVEN diligent readers of Peter Linehan's The Spanish Church and the Papacy in the Thirteenth Century (1971) may find themselves wondering who Gonzalo Pérez Gudiel might have been and why he merits a 600-page biography. Despite serving as archbishop of Toledo from 1280 to 1298, he features in that earlier study—one of the few places in historical writing where he does feature—principally as an illustration of the financial difficulties of the Castilian church hierarchy, rather than as a central figure in the politics of the peninsula. Gonzalo may have appreciated this relative anonymity, for he comes across in this book as exceedingly good at covering his tracks: more often than not, Hernández and Linehan confess, ‘Gudiel left no trace’ (p. 130). Nevertheless, the authors of this remarkable biography succeed in tracking their elusive quarry. They portray a spendthrift, yes, but also a bibliophile, a patron of scholars, a manipulator of the historical record, a perfectionist epistolographer, a confidant and counsellor of princes and kings, and perhaps above all an ambitious and highly successful careerist. Their Gonzalo Pérez (the name Gudiel was first used for him, mistakenly, in the sixteenth century) provides an excellent window on the inner workings of the Church and its connections to society in the second half of the thirteenth century

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