DIAZ DEL CASTILLO, BERNAL. - Spanish chronicler, b. at Medina del Campo in 1492, d. about 1581. He left for America in 1514 with P. Davila and took part in the expedition for the discovery of Yucatán; later he witnessed the conquest of Mexico.
Against Gómara, who had attributed the sole glory of the conquest of Mexico to Cortés, D. composed his Verdadera historia de los sucesos de la conquista de la Nueva España (published in 1632, V. critical ed., Madrid 1941), intended to show the part played by the army in the conquest of Mexico.
BIBL.: I. Viller Villamilly, Observaciones acerca de la Historia..., in Anales del Museo Nacional de arqueología, historia y etnografía, 7 (1931), pp. 119-46; R. Iglesia, Introducción al estudio de B. D. del C. y de su Verdadera Historia, Messico 1941; E. Fueter, Storia della storiografia moderna, Italian trans., I, Napoli 1944, pp. 360-61. For further bibliography: B. Sánchez Alonso, Fuentes de la historia española e hispano americana, Apéndice, Madrid 1946, pp. 216-17.