Juan Carvajal

Juan Carvajal (Carvagial) (c. 1400, Trujillo, Cáceres – 6 December 1469, Rome) was a Spanish Cardinal.

Life and work

Making much progress in canon law and civil law, by 1440 he had attained distinction at Rome as auditor of the Rota and governor of the City. His life was to be spent mostly in the foreign service of the Holy See; his contemporary, Cardinal Jacopo Ammanati, says (Comment., I, 2, 7) that he was sent twenty-two times as papal legate to various rulers and countries.

Between 1441 and 1448 he spent much time in Germany and laboured, in union with Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, to placate the strong feelings of the German princes against Pope Eugene IV, to overcome their "neutrality" in the last, and schismatic phase of the Council of Basel, and to bring about the treaties known as the Concordat of the Princes (1447) and the Concordat of Aschaffenburg (or Vienna) (1448). He was rewarded by Pope Eugene IV,(1383 – February 23, 1447) on the December 14, 1446 with the Cardinal's hat and the title of St. Angelo in Foro Piscium or "in Pescheria". He had been promoted in Spain as a bishop of Plasencia, an episcopal seat in Extremadura since about 1189, to replace Bishop Gonzalo García de Santamaria, (Burgos, 1379 - Burgos, 12 December 1448), Bishop there from 2 July 1423 to 1446. (This Bishop Gonzalo García de Santamaria was from a family of Catholic bishops and archbishops representing Spanish Catholicism in the councils of the first half of the 15th century. They were originally converted in Burgos in 1390 as a result of the attacks on Spanish Jews connected to the preaching of St. Vincent Ferrer.)