Editing The Faerie Queene (section)

===Religion===
[[File:Briton Rivière - Una and the Lion.jpg|thumb|250px|''Una and the Lion'' by [[Briton Rivière]] (1840–1920).]]
''The Faerie Queene'' was written during the Reformation, a time of religious and political controversy. After taking the throne following the death of her half-sister Mary, Elizabeth changed the official religion of the nation to Protestantism.{{sfn|Greenblatt|2006|p=687}} The plot of book one is similar to ''[[Foxe's Book of Martyrs]]'', which was about the persecution of the Protestants and how Catholic rule was unjust.{{sfn|McCabe|2010|p=41}} Spenser includes the controversy of Elizabethan church reform within the epic. Gloriana has godly English knights destroy Catholic continental power in Books I and V.{{sfn|Heale|1999|p=8}} Spenser also endows many of his villains with "the worst of what Protestants considered a superstitious Catholic reliance on deceptive images".{{sfn|McCabe|2010|p=39}}