Fervour

Münster 1534 - 1535

Where does devotion end and delusion begin?

When sweating sickness devastates Holland, ten-year-old Diera prays to live, and—whether it is God, a saint, or something else—a voice in the dark saves her life. 

Fear not, for I have chosen thee.

In the years that follow, that voice becomes her anchor, grounding her in religiosity and a life of service. But even in the hush of an Amsterdam convent, doubt seeps in like rot, spurred by the rising howl of the Reformation outside. Diera’s fragile devotion is upended when a fiery prophet of the coming apocalypse notices her through her habit. He sees in her a vessel for revelation, but she sees in him the echo of that godly voice that once saved her. Abandoning her vows, she follows him into the fever dream of the Münster Rebellion—a city gone mad with belief and poised to greet the end of days.

But this city of God is still ruled by men and all their hungers. Crowned queen of a crumbling kingdom, Diera does not know where devotion ends and delusion begins. She is both prisoner and accomplice, lover and betrayer, prophet and heretic. When the fires burn out and the cannons fall quiet, only one thing remains to be decided. Was Diera ever chosen by God, or damned from the start.

Inspired by the radical real-life story of the Munster Rebellion, Fervour interrogates how women justify complicity in patriarchal systems and the cost of the power they manage to seize.