Yusuf

Yusuf is a Moorish physician whose encounter with Katherine of Aragon becomes a turning point in her understanding of medical knowledge and religious difference. Called to advise her during a crisis over a possible pregnancy, he works within the limits imposed on a queen’s body and status. His careful manner and honest uncertainty contrast with the confidence of the English physician who had earlier attended her; afterward, Katherine can no longer dismiss the Moors as ignorant or inhuman.

Identity and Background

Yusuf is a Moor and a Nubian physician living in England, where his medical knowledge is unfamiliar to the Christian court around Katherine. She initially views him through inherited religious prejudice, but his conduct complicates that judgment. He is described as amused and compassionate, and he responds to disagreement without anger. His knowledge, rather than his status at court, is what gives him access to the queen’s private rooms.

He was born in Spain. His parents fled Málaga after Katherine’s mother introduced the Spanish Inquisition and they feared persecution. That history places Yusuf among the people whose experience of Spanish religious policy differs sharply from Katherine’s inherited account of her homeland. In conversation, he also describes a legal distinction in his society: although slavery exists there, a child is not born enslaved because of the mother’s condition. He presents this as a matter of law and argues that a person is born free. His example gives Katherine a direct encounter with a moral and legal framework she had assumed she could dismiss.

The Secret Consultation

Yusuf reaches Katherine through a hidden stairway from the cellars, along a servants’ passage to her private rooms at Richmond Palace. She agrees to see him because she needs an informed opinion about her prospects of bearing a son, while suspecting that something is wrong with the pregnancy others believe she has. His arrival is clandestine, and she recognizes the conflict between admitting a man into her private chamber and seeking knowledge unavailable from the doctors she has consulted.

The queen’s body cannot be examined by a physician: the rule is that only the king may touch it. An earlier physician had questioned her at a distance and advised against fruit and vegetables, while rejecting Moorish methods of calculating a birth date. Yusuf faces the same restriction. He explains that without an examination he can offer only an opinion based on observation. When he says he would take her hands if she were an ordinary woman, Katherine asks why; he tells her that the news will be difficult. She then extends her hands, and he gently holds them as he gives his assessment. The scene makes the limits on medical access concrete: his judgement must proceed through what he can see and what Katherine can tell him.

Medical Knowledge and Advice

Yusuf does not claim certainty where the evidence cannot provide it. He explains that some questions can be answered, while others remain beyond what physicians understand. In assessing Katherine’s condition, he reasons from her symptoms and the reported course of the pregnancy. He tells her that bleeding makes it likely that her womb is empty, and that the absence of other signs may indicate either that the child has died or that there is no child. The swelling of her abdomen, he says, might have several causes, including infection, a growth, or a miscarriage not yet expelled. His conclusion is a cautious differential assessment, not a promise of certainty.

He also reframes the meaning of her earlier pregnancy. Katherine has been distressed by the loss, but Yusuf points out that conceiving once is evidence that she and her husband are fertile. When she asks why he speaks of her husband’s fertility, he explains that conception depends on both partners. In doing so, he challenges the assumption that reproductive responsibility and uncertainty belong to the queen alone.

Yusuf offers practical advice for strengthening her body and improving the chance of a future pregnancy. He recommends riding before conception, taking a litter afterward, walking daily, and swimming if possible. He advises her to rest around the time he believes conception is most likely, to eat moderately, and to drink less small ale. These recommendations draw on observation and bodily care rather than the dismissive dietary counsel Katherine had received from the English physician. His advice is specific, but he does not present it as a guarantee.

Influence on Katherine

Yusuf’s effect on Katherine extends beyond the consultation. His medical knowledge exposes a contrast between traditions: he describes the study of Greek physicians and further investigation of the body, while Katherine recognizes that his people possess knowledge Christians lack. At first she understands this as a troubling contradiction between her religious convictions and the need for his expertise. Yusuf’s willingness to acknowledge uncertainty also unsettles her confidence that her own answers must be correct.

Later, Katherine remembers not only his diagnosis but the compassion with which he gave it. She revises her judgement of the Moors, concluding that a person capable of meeting an enemy’s distress with kindness cannot simply be called a savage. She comes to see people of another faith as fallible and hopeful, and as faithful to their creed as Christians are to theirs. This change accompanies a broader reconsideration of her parents: she recognizes that they may have been wrong, including in the decisions that left her impoverished and isolated in England. Yusuf does not resolve those political and personal injuries, but his encounter with Katherine gives her a human example that makes inherited certainty harder to sustain.