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 may hold their hams to dry.
For almost two years, after being blessed by a neighborhood 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 had been a hearth hazard, he mentioned in a report in December 2023, in response to cathedral officers. When the cathedral refused to take away the hams, the dispute escalated all the best way 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 modern native initiatives. It additionally spoke to a bigger challenge that ageing church buildings throughout France have been grappling with as they face expensive reparations: Who’s going to pay to take care of the nation’s huge non secular heritage?
After the French Revolution, church properties had been seized by the state, which finally took duty for overseeing most of them. However 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 fireplace in 2019, was funded by about $900 million in donations. However non secular buildings in the remainder of the nation have been largely left to fend for themselves.
Throughout France, an estimated 15,000 non secular buildings out of 45,000 are categorized as historic monuments, in response to the Tradition Ministry. Greater than 2,300 of them are in poor situation, and 363 are thought-about endangered, the ministry mentioned.
“The state of affairs is alarming,” mentioned Hadrien Lacoste, the vp of the Spiritual Heritage Observatory, an impartial nonprofit group. “There’s a drop in non secular follow,” he added, “and there’s a drop in demographics in rural areas.”
Regardless of 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 components of their identities and really feel a powerful want to take care of 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,” mentioned Mathieu Lours, a French historian who focuses on non secular structure.
In France — as has been the case elsewhere in Europe — decaying church buildings are usually remodeled into gyms, eating places, lodges or housing.
In St.-Flour, a renaissance church adjoining to the cathedral was deconsecrated and is now a market and a cultural venue.
Sustaining the cathedral itself was seen as a vital, if expensive, city effort. St.-Flour is on the coronary heart of Cantal, an space of France recognized for its inexperienced hilly landscapes and its native cheese. From a distance, the cathedral, on the high of rocky outcrop, looms over the city like a fortress.
“ the saying, all roads result in Rome?” mentioned Patrice Boulard, the meat producer in control of climbing the tower’s 145 steps to droop the hams there. “Nicely right here in St.-Flour, all roads result in the cathedral.”
The thought 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 had been presupposed to be supplied 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 house. Why not use it for hanging hams, a specialty of the area, he puzzled?
“It began as a joke,” he mentioned, “nevertheless it wasn’t so dumb in spite of everything.”
Altitude, a neighborhood charcuterie cooperative made up of some 40 pig breeders, liked the thought, partly for the advertising and marketing potential, but in addition 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,” mentioned Thierry Bousseau, the corporate’s communication supervisor.
The challenge 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 earnings, as soon as Altitude recouped its prices, got to the cathedral.
General, about 300 hams have been offered and greater than $12,000 was spent to lastly restore the organ, Mr. Bousseau mentioned.
The challenge 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. In accordance with 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 mentioned to have exclaimed. “What a solace!”
Many of the maturation course of for the hams takes place in Altitude warehouses in a close-by city. However Mr. Boyer, the previous rector, is satisfied that the three months they spend hooked up to the tower’s wood 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 all the time the identical, the air flow is all the time the identical,” mentioned Aurélien Gransagne, the chef at Restaurant Serge Vieira, a close-by Michelin-starred restaurant, referring to the humidity within the air. Within the bell tower, he added, “you will have fluctuations, and that’s what makes a product particular.”
The thick, rosy flesh, is pretty much as good as one of the best prosciutto from Italy or jamón from Spain, he mentioned. Mr. Gransagne’s restaurant provides 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, mentioned he determined to place his foot down when the heritage architect declared the challenge harmful.
“The constructing is devoted to spiritual follow,” he mentioned, “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 ground lengthy earlier than the hams had been introduced up, he mentioned.
“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 adjustments, like inserting carpets on the ground of the towers and barring entry to guests. However the hams would proceed to hold, he mentioned.
In October, Ms. Dati, the tradition minister, introduced a call: The hams will keep, supplied a “detailed research” could have examined the “administrative, materials and organizational situations” for the hams to be matured safely, her workplace mentioned in an e-mail. That course of continues to be persevering with.
Regardless of the eventual resolution, the hams have change 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’s not clear if President Emmanuel Macron tried some, and the Elysée didn’t reply to requests for remark.)
Nonetheless, 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.