The "secret faith" of Spenser's Saracens

The Faerie Queene V.viii, Mercilla marshals her forces against "the Souldan" in a fight usually understood as an allegory of the invasion of England by Philip II's Armada. But why represent Philip II as a sultan? In this essay, I argue that Spenser assimilates Catholicism to Islam by writing together narratives of crusade with Protestant apocalyptics, which emphasized the identity of Islam and Catholicism as forms of false belief. He thereby refashioned medieval heroic poetry for a Protestant politics, offering a complex exploration of the fissures of religious identity after the Reformation. This essay forms part of a larger project arguing that English poets and playwrights responded to the roughly contemporary experiences of Ottoman expansion and Christian schism by adapting, rewriting, or resisting the conventions of "Saracen" romance. Fragments of romance echo through a variety of texts, even those seemingly remote from romance. I read this as evidence of an ongoing engagement with problems of religious and national identity in an age of Christian religious warfare and increasing diplomatic and commercial contact with the Islamic world.