In the mid-17th century, the court of Cosimo Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, gathers to watch a play even as the town of Mâcon endures a devastating curse: every woman remains barren and famine gnaws at the land. A laboring woman gives birth to a healthy baby boy—the Baby of Mâcon—and the midwives, haunted by The Mother's advanced years and general ugliness, briefly fear the birth is a false omen. Yet the child arrives, and the Father Tony Vogel sees a chance to profit by selling potions claimed to cure impotence, while the elder Daughter Julia Ormond senses a much larger opportunity to seize wealth through him.
Years pass, and the Daughter schemes to pass the child off as her own, asserting a virgin birth to shield her virtue. A string of precious gifts flows to the Child, and a cult grows around the boy’s supposed fertility. The Daughter uses the Child’s supposed power to barter for livestock and riches, imprisoning The Mother Diana van Kolck, The Father Tony Vogel, the wetnurse Anna Nieland, and a young girl chosen as her father’s sexual slave. The Bishop Philip Stone watches with concern, while The Bishop’s Son Ralph Fiennes wrestles with whether the Child is hers or if the Daughter is lying about his origins.
The Daughter confronts the Bishop’s Son, attempting to prove her virginity, and then leads him to a farm where she keeps her livestock and offers him her supposed purity. The Child, suddenly aware of the peril, wields a strange power to summon a sacred bull to gore the Bishop’s Son; the Son warns the Daughter not to kill the bull, for consequences will follow. The Daughter slays the bull, and word of the blasphemy soon spreads. The Bishop moves to take custody of the Child, while the townspeople whisper of what they’ve witnessed.
To undermine the Daughter further, the Bishop auctions off the Child’s alleged fluids, with many suspects hoping they hold the key to miraculous cures. At night, the Daughter slips into the Child’s room and suffocates him, effectively abandoning him to the world she has shaped. The Bishop orders her execution; however, the town’s laws shield a virgin, forcing Medici to propose an extraordinary workaround to satisfy justice.
A desperate plan unfolds as Medici sets the stage for a horrific ritual: the Daughter is to be raped, with holy pardons granted to militiamen to carry it out. The canopy bed becomes a theater for screams, while Medici and the court outside count the assaults in a chilling, gleeful procession. After 208 men violate her, the Daughter is deemed unfit for execution, only to be discovered dead from the trauma. The Bishop then claims custody of the Child, and the town’s fear fuels a grim process: relics are stripped, and the Child’s body is dismembered in hopes of restoring fortune.
Famine returns to Mâcon as the city reels from these events. In the end, the cast members take a bow, and the rest of the court turns to the camera, acknowledging that they too are performers on this strange, cruel stage.
