He was a nephew of Cardinal Juan Carvajal. He studied in Salamanca from 1466; obtained a bachelor's degree in 1472; and a licentiate in May 1478. Carvajal became rector in 1481.[1]
Moroni (Diz., X, 134) says that he went so far as to accept the office of Antipope Martin VI at Milan whither the Council was soon transferred. Von Reumont says that in Pisa he was known to the urchins of the street as "Papa Bernardino".[4]
It would seem, therefore, that ambition was his chief falling; otherwise he was reputed a good theologian and a friend of art and letters, virtuous, eloquent, and skilful in the business of the curia. Both Carvajal and his colleagues were excommunicated by Julius II, and deposed from their offices, which act of the pope was confirmed by the Fifth Lateran Council (1512). At the seventh session (1513) of this council the Italian cardinals, Carvajal and Sanseverino, separated from their two French colleagues, formally renounced the schism, and were restored by Pope Leo X to their offices.[5]
Carvajal sponsored a considerable body of works that celebrated the deeds of the Catholic Kings and those of the Great Captain, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. He also commissioned literary translations.[7]
He had lived at Rome under eight popes, and was buried in his titular church of Santa Croce, where a magnificent sepulchral monument perpetuates his memory. The noble but modernized frescoes (Pinturicchio school) in the tribuna of the apse, representing the Discovery of the Holy Cross, are owing to his generosity.
