Gudesteus (Bishop of Oviedo)

Gudesteus or Gudesteo (died 1008x12) was the tenth Bishop of Oviedo. He served as an auxiliary bishop to Bishop Bermudo, perhaps by then old and physically weak, from at least 978 and succeeded him as sole bishop on his death, probably in 992. On folio 49 of the Libro gótico de los testamentos of Oviedo, Bermudo and Gudesteus appear beside each in a miniature illustration.

Gudesteus was an Asturian by birth and his parents had left him properties in Lena. Gudesteus's first recorded action as auxiliary bishop was to witness a charter on 10 July 978, with Bermudo not present. On 24 April 984 he calls himself Ouetensis sedis episcopo ("bishop of the see of Oviedo"), again with no reference to Bermudo, though the senior bishop confirmed many other documents in the 980s. A document of 29 July 991 by which King Bermudo II donated a village in Asturias to Bishop Savaric of León, signed only by Gudesteus and not Bermudo, may indicate that by then the latter had retired fully. He would have to have come out of retirement on 2 September 992, when both he and Gudesteus signed the same document as bishops of Oviedo. This may be related to the enmity which Bishop Pelagius reported in his Chronicon regum Legionensium over a century later between Gudesteus and Bermudo II, who was opposed more generally by the Asturians and Leonese and was consequently forced to seek his coronation in Galicia. The act of 2 September 992, Bermudo's last recorded, was the confirmation of the royal will in León. In it Bermudo II confirmed all Oviedo's possessions and privileges and all the gifts and concessions which he had made to it.

In 992 a certain Gudesteus became Bishop of Burgos and it becomes impossible to know for certain whether certain documentary references to a "Bishop Gudesteus", as in a witness list to a donation of 9 April 992, belong to the bishop of Burgos or of Oviedo. Nonetheless a document of 18 August that year is accepted as Gudesteus of Oviedo's.

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