EGN NEWS DESK
Struggling to lift funds for the restoration of his cathedral’s vintage organ, a priest from St.-Flour, a small city in France’s heartland, got here up with a artistic answer. He turned one of many bell towers right into a curing workshop the place farmers might hold their hams to dry.
For almost two years, after being blessed by an area bishop, pork legs swayed in peace within the dry air of the cathedral’s north tower, bringing in much-needed funds and delighting charcuterie lovers. Then an inspector for the group that oversees France’s architectural heritage stepped in.
After noticing a grease stain on the ground of the bell tower, in addition to different infractions, the inspector ordered that the hams be taken down. They have been a fireplace hazard, he stated in a report in December 2023, in line with cathedral officers. When the cathedral refused to take away the hams, the dispute escalated all the way in which to the nation’s minister of tradition, Rachida Dati.
The battle over the St.-Flour hams was broadly derided for example of how overzealous officers can quash revolutionary native initiatives. It additionally spoke to a bigger concern that growing old church buildings throughout France have been grappling with as they face pricey reparations: Who goes to pay to keep up the nation’s huge non secular heritage?
After the French Revolution, church properties have been seized by the state, which finally took duty for overseeing most of them. But the central authorities and native municipalities have struggled to fund the upkeep of the nation’s cathedrals and church buildings.
The restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was ravaged by a devastating hearth in 2019, was funded by about $900 million in donations. But non secular buildings in the remainder of the nation have been largely left to fend for themselves.
Across France, an estimated 15,000 non secular buildings out of 45,000 are labeled as historic monuments, in line with the Culture Ministry. More than 2,300 of them are in poor situation, and 363 are thought of endangered, the ministry stated.
“The state of affairs is alarming,” stated Hadrien Lacoste, the vice chairman of the Religious Heritage Observatory, an impartial nonprofit group. “There’s a drop in non secular apply,” he added, “and there’s a drop in demographics in rural areas.”
Despite a decline in church attendance, cities like St.-Flour, which has a inhabitants of about 6,400, see their cathedrals and church buildings as defining parts of their identities and really feel a powerful want to keep up them.
“We’ve realized that every of our church buildings is slightly Notre-Dame, that the village with out the church is like Paris with out Notre-Dame,” stated Mathieu Lours, a French historian who makes a speciality of non secular structure.
In France — as has been the case elsewhere in Europe — decaying church buildings are sometimes reworked into gyms, eating places, accommodations or housing.
In St.-Flour, a renaissance church adjoining to the cathedral was deconsecrated and is now a market and a cultural venue.
Maintaining the cathedral itself was seen as a necessary, if pricey, city effort. St.-Flour is on the coronary heart of Cantal, an space of France identified for its inexperienced hilly landscapes and its native cheese. From a distance, the cathedral, on the prime of rocky outcrop, looms over the city like a fortress.
“You know the saying, all roads result in Rome?” stated Patrice Boulard, the meat producer accountable for climbing the tower’s 145 steps to droop the hams there. “Well right here in St.-Flour, all roads result in the cathedral.”
The concept for the curing workshop within the bell tower was the brainchild of Gilles Boyer, who was on the time the cathedral’s rector, after funds that have been alleged to be offered by the authorities for repairing the church’s Nineteenth-century choir organ by no means materialized.
A meals lover who had as soon as managed a restaurant in Paris, Mr. Boyer had already arrange beehives on an unused terrace of the cathedral to supply honey on the market. The bell tower was additionally unused area. Why not use it for hanging hams, a specialty of the area, he puzzled?
“It all began as a joke,” he stated, “nevertheless it wasn’t so dumb in spite of everything.”
Altitude, an area charcuterie cooperative made up of some 40 pig breeders, beloved the thought, partly for the advertising potential, but additionally for what they believed to be the particular high quality of the air and situations within the tower for curing hams.
“It creates a hyperlink between enterprise and heritage, between a product and its terroir,” stated Thierry Bousseau, the corporate’s communication manager.
The mission was accredited by each state and church authorities, and the primary batch of hams was placed on sale in markets, within the church and on-line within the spring of 2022, for about $150 every, about $50 greater than what a median native artisanal ham would fetch. The income, as soon as Altitude recouped its prices, got to the cathedral.
Overall, about 300 hams have been offered and greater than $12,000 was spent to lastly restore the organ, Mr. Bousseau stated.
The mission was referred to as “Florus Solatium,” a tribute to the city’s supposed founder, a fifth-century saint referred to as Florus whose relics are saved within the cathedral. According to legend, the saint miraculously escaped bandits by reaching the highest of the cliff, the place residents welcomed him with a standard native ham. “Quid solatium!” he was stated to have exclaimed. “What a solace!”
Most of the maturation course of for the hams takes place in Altitude warehouses in a close-by city. But Mr. Boyer, the previous rector, is satisfied that the three months they spend connected to the tower’s picket beams, uncovered to the wind and to the bell’s vibrations, is what offers the meat its particular high quality.
“Most hams are dried in locations the place the hygrometry is at all times the identical, the air flow is at all times the identical,” stated Aurélien Gransagne, the chef at Restaurant Serge Vieira, a close-by Michelin-starred restaurant, referring to the humidity within the air. In the bell tower, he added, “you’ve got fluctuations, and that’s what makes a product particular.”
The thick, rosy flesh, is pretty much as good as the very best prosciutto from Italy or jamón from Spain, he stated. Mr. Gransagne’s restaurant gives diners rose-shaped slices of the meat alongside different appetizers — and a little bit of storytelling about its provenance.
Given the success of the tower-cured hams, Jean-Paul Rolland, who took over as rector from Mr. Boyer in 2022, stated he determined to place his foot down when the heritage architect declared the mission harmful.
“The constructing is devoted to non secular apply,” he stated, “so it’s less than the administration to inform us what we are able to do or not inside.”
The grease stain in all probability appeared on the age-old parquet flooring lengthy earlier than the hams have been introduced up, he stated.
“It’s like the owner telling a tenant that he’s not allowed to vary a portray’s place in the lounge,” Mr. Rolland added.
He did make some small modifications, like inserting carpets on the ground of the towers and barring entry to guests. But the hams would proceed to hold, he stated.
In October, Ms. Dati, the tradition minister, introduced a choice: The hams will keep, offered a “detailed examine” may have examined the “administrative, materials and organizational situations” for the hams to be matured safely, her workplace stated in an e-mail. That course of continues to be persevering with.
Whatever the eventual choice, the hams have turn into one thing of a trigger célèbre in a rustic that values the gastronomic choices of small producers as a lot because the nation’s non secular heritage. St.-Flour made nationwide headlines, and gross sales of the hams have been brisk. The Élysée Palace in Paris has a standing order for hams each three months, and served slices of it at a buffet in June, Altitude says. (It shouldn’t be clear if President Emmanuel Macron tried some, and the Elysée didn’t reply to requests for remark.)
Still, not everybody in St.-Flour is pleased with the thought of turning the church into one thing of a market.
“There have been bees, now there’s hams. What’s subsequent, cheese?” requested Roger Merle, 68, the proprietor of a clothes retailer within the city.
