Religious coexistence in al-Andalus

Religious coexistence in al-Andalus is both a political ideal and a test of Christian rule in Catalina’s story. She remembers a society in which Moors, Christians, and Jews could live beside one another, and sees its peace, legal order, and learning as achievements from which Christian rulers benefited. The promise of convivencia after the conquest of Granada gives that ideal a formal pledge; its rapid abandonment exposes the gap between a ruler’s word and the coercive unity imposed in its name.

A model of law and government

While discussing how to govern the Welsh borderlands with Arthur, Prince of Wales, Catalina argues that law must stand above any individual lord. She invokes the example of the Moors in Spain, saying that they had brought peace and prosperity and established law without requiring people to change their religion or language. Her comparison is political as well as personal: she offers a form of rule that could bind a diverse population without first making it uniform in belief.

Arthur challenges the comparison from the standpoint of Christian kingship. He observes that Catalina’s parents are imposing their religion and have already driven out the Jews, with the Moors next in danger. Catalina acknowledges the suffering, but distinguishes the policy from the original undertaking made when Granada was won: her parents, she says, had intended to let people practise their own faith. Arthur then asks whether a country must have one faith to become one country. Their exchange leaves the tension unresolved. Catalina defends coexistence as a way of governing, yet also accepts that a Christian king has a duty to bring his subjects to God.

The promise and its reversal

The account of convivencia is inseparable from the terms offered to Boabdil. The victors had solemnly promised that Muslims would be as safe under their rule as Christians had been under his, and the pledge held out the possibility that Moor, Christian, and Jew could live with dignity as People of the Book. But the promise is not kept: within three months, the Jews are expelled and the Moors threatened. Conversion becomes a requirement, while suspicion about a convert’s sincerity can bring that person before the Spanish Inquisition.

The stated aim is to make one nation through one faith, transforming religious conformity into a means of defining who belongs. The narrative sets this policy against the earlier pledge, so that unity appears not as an extension of convivencia but as its destruction. The reversal also changes the meaning of victory: the conquerors can claim to bring a single faith to the country, but they do so by force and by repudiating the trust on which coexistence depended.

Cultural exchange and unequal power

Catalina’s admiration for Moorish society is grounded in more than an abstract political argument. The Christian victors learn from Moorish scholars and receive care from Moorish doctors; they use inherited knowledge, including a system of numbers beginning with zero, and enjoy the fruits, waterworks, architecture, poetry, games, and gardens associated with Moorish culture. The contrast is pointed: those who have prevailed militarily continue to rely on the learning and material achievements of the people they have defeated.

In the palace, Catalina asks Madilla to teach her the meaning of its inscriptions. One inscription concerns justice; another asks whether anyone has seen a garden so beautiful. The palace itself is imagined chiefly as a garden, a place shaped for both flowers and people, rather than simply as a fortress. This setting gives cultural inheritance a durable presence even as the new rulers alter religious practice. Soldiers’ footsteps and the suppression of the mosque’s call to prayer do not erase the building’s beauty or the older sense of peace attached to it. Admiration, however, does not undo domination: the conquerors preserve and enjoy Moorish culture while restricting the people who created it.

Katherine’s change of judgment

Later, Katherine of Aragon revises the religious judgments she had inherited. Remembering the Moorish physician who treated her with compassion, she can no longer dismiss Moors as savages or regard their faith as sufficient reason to condemn them. His conduct leads her to recognize them as people who, like Christians, are fallible, hopeful, and faithful to their own creed. Her response does not require her to abandon her Christian faith; it does require her to accept that another person may have reasons for belief and deserve to reach their own conclusions.

That change widens into a reassessment of her parents. Katherine connects the persecution of Moors and Jews with the loss of scholarship, medicine, and skill, and concludes that those who admired learning had nevertheless driven learned communities from Spain. She also judges that a ruler who fought for justice had acted unjustly. Her mother’s authority, once almost unquestionable to her, is no longer inseparable from divine authority. Katherine continues to love her mother, but no longer treats her as infallible, and explicitly rejects a crusade against Moors or anyone else, as well as persecution and cruelty based on belief or appearance.

Significance

The ideal of religious coexistence in al-Andalus is therefore neither a simple celebration of harmony nor a policy Catalina can invoke without contradiction. She admires the law and prosperity associated with Moorish rule, recognizes the broken promise made after Granada’s conquest, and still repeats the Christian obligation to bring subjects to God. The later change in Katherine’s convictions makes that contradiction consequential: compassion and reflection loosen the inherited equation between Christian rule, religious uniformity, and justice. Coexistence becomes a measure by which the victors’ conduct can be judged—and by which Katherine learns to judge the authorities she once trusted.