Moors

The Moors are a recurring presence in Catalina’s understanding of Spain and of the world beyond it: she invokes their rule as a model of law and prosperity, recalls the Muslims who remain in Spain as Moriscos, and praises Moorish medicine, even as she fears a future attack by Muslim powers. They are not encountered directly in these scenes; instead, their significance emerges through what Catalina remembers, admires, and anticipates, revealing the conflict between cultural inheritance and religious-political fear.

Rule, Law, and Coexistence

Catalina argues that law must stand above a lord’s private power. She points to the Moors as having established peace and prosperity without trying to change people’s language or religion, and says her parents followed that example. Her comparison comes during Arthur’s efforts to bring order to the Welsh borderlands, where powerful landowners and local chieftains resist any common authority. In this context, the Moorish example is not simply a memory of Spain: it is a political model Catalina offers for governing a divided territory.

Arthur counters that Catalina’s parents are now imposing their religion, having already driven out the Jews and likely to turn next against the Moors. Catalina acknowledges the suffering and recalls that, when Granada was conquered, the promise had been to allow people to practise their own religion. Her account therefore holds together an ideal of coexistence and her recognition that the policy of Spain, Katherine's homeland has departed from it.

Spanish Muslims and Catalina’s Inheritance

Catalina explains that Morisco means “little Moor” in Spanish and distinguishes Spanish Muslims from Moors in Africa. She recalls that, as she was leaving Spain, some were beginning to call themselves Mudajjan, meaning one allowed to remain. When Arthur asks whether that means they are allowed to remain in their own land, Catalina immediately insists that the land belongs to Spain. The exchange exposes the limits of her sympathy: she can describe a community’s changing name and precarious status, yet she also asserts the conquerors’ claim to the country as her own.

The distinction between the Moors of Spain and those of Africa also shapes Catalina’s later expectations of war. She tells Arthur that the Moors have been defeated in Spain for now but remain powerful in Africa, the Holy Land, Turkey, and lands beyond. She expects them eventually to move into Christendom, though she cannot say when. Her warning draws on a broad perception of recurring conflict rather than on a specific attack in the scenes shown.

Knowledge, Fear, and Memory

Catalina’s admiration for Moorish learning is especially clear when she wishes for a Moorish doctor. She calls their medical skill unrivalled and Arab medicine the finest in the world, lamenting that she did not bring a physician with her. The moment places her inherited knowledge beside the English medical care available to her, and shows that her esteem for Moorish expertise persists even within the Christian court.

The Moors also enter the novel through fear and memory. In a night of pain, Catalina dreams of black-sailed ships coming upriver and initially thinks they may be the Moors; she then imagines a Spanish fleet as an enemy as well. The dream does not establish an actual invasion. It makes the possibility of attack part of her private dread, entangling the danger she associates with Muslim powers with the estrangement she feels from Spain.

Narrative Significance

The Moors are defined less by direct action than by the competing meanings Catalina assigns to them. They signify a remembered example of governance and medical knowledge, a community whose promised freedom of worship is at risk, and a military danger she expects to recur. These strands complicate any simple opposition between admiration and hostility: Catalina can praise Moorish achievements and invoke their political example while still speaking from the position of a Spanish Christian princess who regards Spain as her own. Through that tension, the Moors become a measure of the gap between ideals of law and coexistence and the coercive claims of conquest and religious power.