Don Pablo de Santamaría and 16 epistles

Don Pablo de Santamaría y 16 epístolas, by Pérez de Guzmán, is a collection of short biographies of political figures in Spain of his time. His style, lively and passionate, was founded on personal observation and truthfulness opposed to the laudatory style of other authors.

Don Pablo, bishop of Burgos, was a great wise and courageous man in science. He was a native of Burgos and was a Hebrew, of great lineage of that nation. He was converted by the grace of God and by the knowledge of the truth, that he was great literate in loving the laws. Before his conversion he was a great philosopher and theologian, and since he was converted, continuing the study while at the court of the pope at Avignon, he was born a great preacher. He was first archidian of Treviño, and then bishop of Cartagena, at last, bishop of Burgos, and, later, chancellor of Castile.
There was a very great place with King Don Enrique the third and he was very adept at him; And, no doubt, it was a very great reason that of every discreet king or prince he should be loved, ca was a man of great counsel and of great discretion and of great secrecy, which are virtues and graces that make man worthy of the deprivation of any discreet king. When the said king died, he left him for one of his testamentaries. And then there was a great place with Pope Benedict XIII.
He was a very great preacher. He made some very profitable writings of our faith, of which was one the Additions on Niculaus of Lyra, and a treatise De cena Domini, and another Of the generation of Jesus Christ, and a great volume which is called Scrutiny of the Scriptures, in which, for strong and lively reasons, the Messiah proves to have come, and That being God and man.

Fragment of the work