Warriors of the Light

Warriors of the Light: Esclarmonde de Foix and the Cathar Legacy is a contemporary account of the Albigensian Crusade and the life and teachings of Esclarmonde de Foix, a thirteenth-century Cathar parfaite and resistance leader. It is told by Esclarmonde’s student Auzina de Raissac in her Sovinensa, an original unpublished 13th century manuscript written in Occitan.

In the present day, Isobel is researching a link between the troubadours and the Cathars. She meets Agnès at an academic conference in Carcassonne, France. Sharing a common philosophy of fighting against injustice, they become friends, and Agnès introduces Isobel to her father Guilhèm, a former paratrooper and resistance fighter. After realizing that he owes Isobel a debt of honor, Guilhèm allows her to read the Sovinensa.

As Isobel reviews this ancient text, she realizes that carefully constructed Church-inspired misinformation has deliberately given a false picture of the Cathars and that there is a remarkable similarity between events of the thirteenth century and what is happening all over the world today.