Review: The Fire and the Light by Glen Craney
The Fire and the Light: A Novel of the Cathars and the Lost Teachings of Christ
by Glen Craney
Esclarmonde de Foix was a remarkable woman who led the Cathar sect for many years during the peak of Catholicism’s might. Known for her intelligence and wit, she died in 1215 and has been canonized by at least one Gnostic church. However, to the Catholic Church she remains a heretic who spread a false version of the church. Glen Craney has taken the many myths, legends and facts of Esclarmonde’s life and woven a richly layered tale of historical fiction. *
This woman who became the face of the Cathars was not born into the religion. Instead, she was born into the famed courts of love in Occitania. Young and beautiful, her innocent flirtations captures the heart of a talented troubadour named Folques de Marseille, but she falls in love with a Templar knight who has been hunting heretics on her brother’s land. Esclarmonde stumbles across the hiding Cathars one day and soon converts to their teachings, becoming more deeply entrenched in the faith even as her beloved knight leaves and she marries another man. The tangled love triangles of her youth cause her great trouble later in life. As she rises to prominence in the Cathar church, her rejected suitor Folques gains power in the Catholic Church and they clash constantly, sometimes with words and sometimes with warriors, with the whole of Europe watching to see which theology will triumph.
I wouldn’t say the story dragged, but there is so much to absorb that this was a book I had to read in small doses. This is an extremely densely packed novel, and at nearly 500 pages it is a lot. I had to read it rather slowly, and carefully; if I sped up I was sure to miss critical details in the vast, sweeping epic. Although the story focuses mainly on Esclarmonde, each chapter jumps to a new location to cover secret conferences and power struggles in the Catholic Church, battles in the Holy Land for the Crusades, prison cells where captured Cathars await death and glittering courts across the land. Glen Craney’s goal may have been to tell the story of the Cathars, but in the process he has painted a portrait of the whole of medieval culture.
It is also difficult to classify the book to a single genre. There is action. Mysteries abound, including the role of the Cathars in the protection/hiding of the Holy Grail and the Mandylion/Sudarium. There’s romance. Tenets of the Cathar faith are explained and many of Esclarmonde’s mystical experiences beautifully rendered. The Fire and the Light will be a beautiful adventure for all with the patience to read it.
(*It is important to remember that, first and foremost, the book is a work of fiction. While many real historical figures appear in the book, it is not perfectly accurate to history. I didn’t notice anything so glaring or jarring that it interrupted my reading pleasure, but to be fair I am not exceptionally well-read on Catharism, or 13th century medieval history.)
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