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I. Introduction In Book I of his epic poem The Faerie Queen, Edmund Spenser means to allegorize the Christian individual’s quest for holiness and, at the same time, give a commentary on the religious debate of his particular cultural moment. Spenser lived in post-reformation England, where Protestantism (particularly Anglicanism) had replaced Catholicism as the national religion. Furious with the disloyal Catholic propagandists that hindered English solidarity, Spenser uses the The Faerie Queen to relate his vision of a magnificent English empire reminiscent of the Arthurian days of old. This empire includes a unique national religion with the monarch (in the case of the poem, the Faerie Queen) as a religious and political protector, par excellence . Spenser’s critique of Catholicism includes but is not limited to criticism of: the superficiality of Catholic faith as works without God’s grace and the shortsighted and uncharitable nature of the Catholic monastic life. His understanding of Christian holiness, as the Redcrosse Knight represents it in Book I, is a heroic quest. In Spenser’s estimation, true holiness is a knight-like state of mind, and this holiness is earned by way of unwearied struggle versus the forc