Pedro Menendez de Aviles and the Conquest of Florida: A New Manuscript

“The most authoritative edition of Gonzalo Solis de Meras’s rare eye-witness account of Pedro Menendez de Aviles’s 1565 expedition to Florida, one of the earliest and most valuable accounts written about any region in the United States.”
- J. Michael Francis, author of Invading Colombia: Spanish Accounts of the Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada Expedition of Conquest

“An invaluable source for scholars and aficionados of La Florida alike. The history reads like a novel, and with its careful presentation, we now have a reliable source to a key chapter in early American history and literature.”
- Thomas Hallock, coeditor of William Bartram, The Search for Nature's Design: Selected Art, Letters, and Unpublished Writings

Pedro Menendez de Aviles (1519–1574) founded St. Augustine in 1565. His expedition was documented by his brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solis de Meras, who left a detailed and passionate account of the events leading to the establishment of America’s oldest city.

Until recently, the only extant version of Solis de Meras’s record was one single manuscript that Eugenio Ruidiaz y Caravia transcribed in 1893, and subsequent editions and translations have always followed Ruidiaz’s text. In 2012, David Arbesu discovered a more complete record: a manuscript including folios lost for centuries and, more important, excluding portions of the 1893 publication based on retellings rather than the original document.

In the resulting volume, Pedro Menendez de Aviles and the Conquest of Florida, Arbesu sheds light on principal events missing from the story of St. Augustine’s founding. By consulting the original chronicle, Arbesu provides readers with the definitive bilingual edition of this seminal text.