Bernal Diaz — Annotated Bibliography

Texts from Medieval Spain

Chronica Hispana Saeculi XII, Part I; Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis LXXI. Edited by Emma Falque, Juan Gil, and Antonio Maya. Turnholt: Brepols, 1990.

The Corpus Christianorum is a major publishing undertaking by Brepols, a Belgian publisher.  The notion is to publish scholarly manuscripts dealing with texts of a loosely defined “Christian Age.”  The majority of publications treat Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.  This volume contains textual editions and scholarly prefatory material of four twelfth-century Spanish chronicles composed in Latin: Historia Roderici vel Gesta Roderici Campidocti; Carmen Campidoctoris; Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris; and Prefatio de Almaria.  Each of these works records a narrative account of a Castilian military operations against the Spanish Muslim polities in the eleventh or twelfth century.  These texts, therefore, are of particular importance in presenting the historical background to the Spanish conquest of the Americas, but also in providing examples of the literary tradition in which Bernal Diaz del Castillo wrote.

The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest. Translated and annotated by Simon Barton and Richard Fletcher. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000.

An English translation of some of the texts in Chronica Hispana Saeculi XII, Part I.

The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon: A Translation of the Medieval Catalan Llibre dels Fets. Translated by Damian Smith and Helena Buffery. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.

An English translation of the autobiographical account of James I of Aragon, known as “The Conqueror” (Jaume el Conqueridor in Catalan, Jaime el Conquistador in Castlian) composed in the middle of the Thirteenth Century.  James oversaw the most impressive Catalonian-Aragonese expansion of the Reconquista, taking Valencia and the Balearic Islands during the course of his reign.  His account is significant for the literary tradition in which Bernal Diaz del Castillo wrote because it is autobiographical in nature, written as a first-person narrative, and composed in the author’s vernacular (Catalan) rather than in Latin.

Las Siete Partidas (Five volumes). Translated by Samuel Parsons Scott; edited by Robert I Burns, S.J. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

An English translation of the legal code drawn up by the thirteenth-century Castilian monarch Alfonso X “The Wise.”  Las Siete Partidas has been revised many times since its original composition, but it still forms the basis of much local law throughout the Spanish-speaking world, and even in the American Southwest.  Las Siete Partidas formally codified much of the practices of the Reconquista, and by extension the Spanish conquest of the Americas.  Furthermore, this text is important in that it marks the turn from the composition of official documents in Latin to composing official documents in the Castilian vernacular.

Other Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico

Cortes: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary Francisco Lopez de Gomara. Translated from the Istoria de la Conquista de Mexico by Lesley Byrd Simpson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964.

Published in various editions during the late Sixteenth Century, Lopez’s account of the conquest of Mexico is derived from personal interviews with members of the expedition, and a close personal relationship with Cortes.  However, both contemporaries and modern scholars have criticized the accuracy of Lopez’s narrative, and have credited Lopez as the source of much of the mythology surrounding the event.

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla, translated from Nahuatl into Spanish by Angel Maria Garibay, English translation by Lysander Kemp. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962.

A collection of various Nahuatl-language accounts of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.  The book is organized as a chronological narrative, though this structure is completely superficial, with portions of independent accounts cobbled together to form a cohesive whole.  Additionally, not all of the text consulted are Nahuatl, but rather, are Spanish translations of indigenous texts.  Still, this book offers a perspective on the conquest that differs from the Spanish chronicles.

Secondary Works about the Conquest

Maltby, William S. The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire. New York City: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

A new general account of the Spanish Empire by an expert on the reign of Charles V.  Maltby begins with a chapter on the central- and late-medieval Spain and ends with the wars of independence in Latin America.  Maltby’s emphasis is on the political history of the empire, but he gives equal weight to European and overseas possessions.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York City: Harper & Row, 1984.

Originally published in French as La Conquete de l’Amerique in 1982.  Tzvetan Todorov is a refugee from Communist Bulgaria and has lived in France since the 1960s.  Todorov’s work is considered a classic, and must be addressed by any scholar working on the conquest.  In the early 1980s, this was a ground-breaking work that looked at the conquest with the disciplinary tools of the social sciences, but also attempted to draw broad philosophical conclusions from actions in the past.

Secondary Works about the Primary Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico

Beckjord, Sarah H. Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.

Sarah Beckjord applies post-modern literary criticism to several of the narrative accounts of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, including Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, Bartolome de Las Casas, and Bernal Diaz del Castillo.  Beckjord seeks to put these authors into the context of Renaissance Humanism, and grapples with any of the famous assertions of Hayden White.  Beckjord concludes that while many of the elements of these narratives are especially literary, their authors were consciously crafting works that they thought of as distinctly historical.

Carman, Glen. Rhetorical Conquests: Cortes, Gomara, and Renaissance Imperialism. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006.

Carman seeks to place the chronicle sources into the context of Renaissance rhetoric by analyzing the texts according to Renaissance rhetorical theory and by demonstrating the importance of rhetorical training for the leaders and chroniclers of the conquest and for the intended audience of the accounts.