.
Therefore, the similar knight-like quality of Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises and the Redcrosse Knight of The Faerie Queen generates surprising similarities between the conceptions of holiness therein. In fact, Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises is, in many ways, tantamount to the Christian individual deliberately embarking upon a Spenserian quest for holiness. Moreover, Ignatius's practicality and his explicitly stated place of God's grace in the quest to holiness takes care of Spenser's castigation of exclusively ascetic Catholic monasticism and Catholicism's disregard for the necessity of God's grace for holiness.
II. Spenser's Soldierly Holiness and his commentary on Catholicism .
In the preface to Book I, Spenser declares the "Legende of the Knight of the Red Crosse, or of Holinesse- to be a story of "Fierce warres and faithfull loues- (39). It is by way of fierce wars and faithful loves that he may "moralize- the story (39). Therefore, according to Spenser, ferocious struggles coupled with faithful loves have the ability to moralize a story. Wars which vigorously delineate the good from the bad and loves which involve what an individual is most emotionally invested in allow Spenser to successfully craft a story that portrays the individual and his or her invested interest in following the good and avoiding the bad in order to achieve holiness. Hence, it is the vital inclusion of fierce wars and faithful loves that allow Spenser's poem to become a legend of holiness. A legend of holiness requires a moral texture; it requires situations and events that engender moral judgments.
Spenser's particular choice of fierce wars and faithful loves speaks to his understanding of the particular moralizing elements that he finds essential for the acquisition of holiness. According to Spenser, both the quest of the Redcrosse Knight and the quest towards holiness must be achieved by fierce struggle.