His main work is the Historia eclesiástica indiana, written in the late sixteenth century, but not published until 1870 by Joaquín García Icazbalceta, which recounts the history of Franciscan evangelization in the colony of New Spain in the Americas and abuses of the indigenous by Spanish civil society.
Gerónimo de Mendieta was born in Vitoria, Álava, in the Basque country of (Spain), in 1525.
He was later moved to Tlaxcala where he became a friend of fellow Franciscan Toribio de Benavente "Motolinia".
[2] He returned to the Iberian Peninsula in 1570, bringing with him the first copies of the works of Bernardino de Sahagún to the Spanish authorities.
The publication of the work was prohibited, as it was deemed to contain "unsound," millenarian, Joachimite ideas,[5] and it was only published for the first time in 1870, when it was brought to light by Joaquín García Icazbalceta.