Christopher Bainbridge (c. 1462/1464 – 14 July 1514) was an English cardinal. Of Westmorland origins, he was a nephew of Bishop Thomas Langton of Winchester, represented the continuation of Langton's influence and teaching and succeeded him in many of his appointments such as provost of The Queen's College in the University of Oxford. Towards the end of the reign of King Henry VII, he was successively Master of the Rolls, a Privy Counsellor, Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Durham. Becoming Archbishop of York and therefore Primate of England in 1508, he was sent as procurator of King Henry VIII to the papal court of Pope Julius II, where he was active in the diplomatic affairs leading to Henry's war against France and took part in the election of Julius's successor, Pope Leo X. He was murdered by poisoning in Italy in 1514 and was succeeded as Archbishop of York by Thomas Wolsey.

Christopher Bainbridge was born in Hilton, Westmorland (then in the parish of St Michael Bongate, in Appleby), to an established local family with roots in Bainbridge, North Yorkshire. He was said to have been fifty years old at his death and must therefore have been born about 1464. A son of Reginald Bainbridge and Isobel Langton, he was a nephew and protégé of Thomas Langton of Appleby, Bishop of Winchester, a relationship formative in his ecclesiastical career. Hilton is due east of Appleby, on the eastern margin of the Vale of Eden where it rises into the Pennines.

It is supposed that Christopher received part of his education at The Queen's College, Oxford, although there is no surviving record of this. His uncle Langton had been a student of the college, and returned to it in 1487 as Provost, a post to which Bainbridge himself succeeded. He also studied law at Ferrara and Bologna. He was granted an indult in 1479 which allowed him to hold church benefices while still unordained and under the age of 16, and another in 1482 that allowed him to hold more than one benefice concurrently. His cousin Robert Langton "the pilgrim" (died 1524) was educated at Queen's College Oxford and there proceeded D.C.L. in 1501.

The appointment of Thomas Langton to the see of Salisbury left a vacancy for Bainbridge's presentation to the church of Pembridge, Herefordshire on 28 April 1485. He held the prebend of South Grantham (Lincolnshire) in the Salisbury diocese until February 1485/86, when he exchanged it for that of Chardstock, Dorset, and two months later received the prebend of Horton, Dorset, which he held until 1508. He was described as magister, or scientist, by 1486.

In the early 1490s he was named a chamberlain of the English Hospice in Rome and rented one of its houses. At Bologna he was admitted DCL in 1492; he was in Rome between 1492 and 1494. Having received the prebend of North Kelsey, Lincolnshire (in Lincoln cathedral) in 1495/96, which he held until 1500, he succeeded Thomas Langton as Provost of Queen's College in 1496. Langton was elected Archbishop of Canterbury but died in January 1500/01 before he could be installed. His will appointed Christopher Bainbridge one of his executors, and Bainbridge was one of three who swore to administer at probate in 1501. He may therefore have participated in the establishment of Langton's tomb and chantry in the chapel of St Birinus at Winchester Cathedral, and was certainly involved in setting up his chantry in Bongate, Appleby.

By 1497 he had become chaplain to king Henry VII, and in 1501 was named archdeacon of Surrey in the diocese of Winchester. Having been presented to the prebend of Strensall, North Riding of Yorkshire, in the cathedral of York in September 1503, in December of that year he became dean of York. He was appointed Master of the Rolls in 1504, and was incorporated at Lincoln's Inn on 20 January 1505: in the same year, being admitted to the Privy Council, he became Dean of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. He was appointed Bishop of Durham on 27 August 1507.

Bainbridge was translated to York on 22 September 1508 (a sign of the favour he enjoyed at court), where his kinsman Dr Henry Machell, Doctor of both Laws in the University of Cambridge, became Commissary (holding the prebend of North Newbald), and Robert Langton his Treasurer (with the prebend of Weighton): both of them were admitted to the York Guild of Corpus Christi in 1510. Bainbridge attended the coronation of King Henry VIII on 23 June 1509, and on 24 September Henry appointed him to be his personal Orator, Procurator, Agent, Factor, Negotiator and Special Nuncio to the Roman Curia of Pope Julius II. In this mission, which occupied the remainder of his life, Bainbridge took with him a train including Richard Pace, who had studied in Oxford and in Padua as a protégé of Thomas Langton's, and held Bainbridge in great admiration.

Just at this time Julius had taken alarm at the invasion of Italy by Louis XII of France, and the support of England was therefore of great importance. It is said that Bainbridge, who was to support the cause of the Venetians, sent letters urging Henry to intervene against France, to provide a pretext to close the war in Italy and reignite it in France. The French historian Aubéry accuses Bainbridge of cunning and artifice, and of mixing his personal ambition to become a cardinal with the interests of his royal master. Julius left Rome to relieve Bologna, and was nearly taken prisoner in the war. A group of pro-French cardinals summoned a council in opposition to him at Pisa, which Julius opposed by calling another council at Rome, the Fifth Lateran Council, in the course of which he created (in March 1511) several new Cardinals, of whom Bainbridge was one, with the title of "Cardinal of St. Praxed's" or Santa Prassede.