Person
Pérez Pastor, Cristóbal (1842-1908)
Tobarra (Albacete, España) 1842-06-11 - Horche (Guadalajara, España) 1908-08-21
Cristóbal Pérez Pastor was a Spanish priest, archivist, and one of the greatest specialists in Miguel de Cervantes' work. He was born in Tobarra (Albacete) in 1842 and died in Horche (Guadalajara) in 1908.
He studied Theology at the Seminary of Murcia and moved to Madrid, where he graduated and got a PhD in Physics and Chemistry from the Central University.
Since 1881 he was a civil servant at the Archivists and Librarians Corps and was assigned to the Provincial Library of Toledo, to the Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE; National Library of Spain), to the Protocols Archives, to the Library of the Real Academia de la Historia (Royal Academy of History), and finally, to the Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN; National Historical Archive) until his death. He was also a Bibliography professor at the Diplomatic School.
He was appointed Agriculture Professor at the Puerto Rico Institute in 1886, but did not take office. Because of that, this position was declared vacant by the Ministry of Overseas.
Within the context of Don Quixote's Tercentenary in 1905, he was one of the organizers of the BNE Exposition about Cervantes.
The importance of Pérez Pastor lies in the publication, between 1897 and 1902, of two volumes containing documents on Cervantes. These documents supposed an authentic revolution for the Cervantes scholars of that time. It is called "Documentos cervantinos hasta ahora inéditos" and it collected 150 documents, facts, and unpublished facts about Cervantes' life which were unknown. This work became the main documentary source for the production of Cervantes biographies, such as those by Navarro and Ledesma in 1905. Furthermore, it was the basis of the fundamental documentary biography by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly published in 1913.
Pérez Pastor was also proposed as Language Academician by Benito Pérez Galdós and Menéndez Pelayo, although he could not join it because he died.
PARES: Caja AGA 31/06543 (legajo 6163 / expediente 11) : Expediente personal de Archivero de Cristóbal Pérez Pastor.
Villanueva Toledo, María Josefa. Archiveros, profesores y catedráticos cervantistas en la primera mitad del siglo XX : fuentes documentales en el Archivo General de la Administración. En: España entre repúblicas, 1868-1939: actas de las VII Jornadas de Castilla-La Mancha sobre investigación en archivos. Guadalajara, 15-18 noviembre 2005. Guadalajara : Anabad Castilla-La Mancha . vol. 2, pp. 575-605.