Struggling to boost funds for the restoration of his cathedral’s historic organ, a priest from Saint-Fleur, a small city within the coronary heart of France, got here up with a artistic resolution. He transformed one of many bell towers right into a canning workshop the place farmers may grasp their drumsticks to dry.
For almost two years after it was blessed by a local bishoppork legs swayed in peace within the dry air of the north tower of the cathedral, bringing a lot wanted funds and delighting sausage lovers. Then an inspector from the group that oversees France’s architectural heritage intervened.
After noticing a greasy stain on the ground of the belfry, in addition to different violations, the inspector ordered the hams to be eliminated. They’re a hearth hazard, he stated in a report in December 2023, in keeping with cathedral officers. When the cathedral refused to take away the hams, the dispute escalated all the best way to the nation’s tradition minister, Rachida Data.
The battle for hams from St. Flour was extensively derided for example of how overzealous officers can undo progressive native initiatives. He additionally spoke to a bigger drawback France’s growing older church buildings are grappling with as they face costly reparations: Who can pay to take care of the nation’s huge non secular heritage?
After the French Revolution, church properties had been confiscated by the state, which finally assumed duty for overseeing most of them. However the central authorities and native municipalities are struggling to finance the maintenance of the nation’s cathedrals and church buildings.
The restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was devastated by devastating fire in 2019 was funded by about $900 million in donations. However non secular buildings in the remainder of the nation have largely been left to fend for themselves.
In accordance with the Ministry of Tradition, about 15,000 non secular buildings out of 45,000 in France are categorized as historic monuments. Greater than 2,300 of them are in poor situation and 363 are thought-about endangered, the ministry stated.
“The scenario is alarming,” stated Hadrien Lacoste, vice chairman of the Spiritual Heritage Observatory, an impartial nonprofit group. “There is a decline in non secular practices,” he added, “and there is a decline in rural demographics.”
Though declining church attendancecities like St.-Flour, which has a inhabitants of about 6,400, see their cathedrals and church buildings as defining parts of their identification and really feel a robust want to take care of them.
“We realized that every of our church buildings is a small Notre Dame, {that a} village with out a church is like Paris with out Notre Dame,” stated Mathieu Lurs, a French historian specializing in non secular structure.
In France – because it was all over the place else in Europe – the church buildings are falling aside often transformed in gyms, eating places, inns or houses.
In St.-Flour, a Renaissance church adjoining to the cathedral was desecrated and is now a market and cultural website.
Sustaining the cathedral itself was thought-about an essential, if costly, city effort. St.-Flour is within the coronary heart of Cantal, a area of France recognized for its inexperienced hilly landscapes and its native cheese. Within the distance, the cathedral, atop a rocky outcrop, rises above town like a fortress.
“ the saying that each one roads result in Rome?” stated Patrice Boullard, the butcher chargeable for climbing the tower’s 145 steps to hold the hams there. “Nicely right here in Saint-Fleur, all roads result in the cathedral.”
The concept for the healing workshop within the belfry got here from Gilles Boyet, who was rector of the cathedral on the time, after the funds that ought to have been supplied by the authorities to restore the church’s Nineteenth-century choir organ had been by no means materialized.
A foodie who as soon as ran a restaurant in Paris, Mr Boyer has already arrange beehives on a disused cathedral terrace to provide honey on the market. The bell tower was additionally an unused house. Why not use it to hold hams, a specialty of the area, he questioned?
“It began as a joke,” he stated, “however it wasn’t so dumb in spite of everything.”
Altitude, an area sausage co-op of about 40 pig farmers, appreciated the thought, partly due to the advertising and marketing potential, but additionally due to what they are saying are the particular air high quality and circumstances within the leg drying tower.
“It creates a connection between enterprise and heritage, between product and its terroir”, stated Thierry Busso, the corporate’s communications supervisor.
The challenge was accredited by each state and church authorities and the primary batch of ham went on sale in markets, within the church and on-line within the spring of 2022. for about $150 every, about $50 greater than the common native artisan ham would fetch. The income, after Altitude recouped their prices, got to the cathedral.
In all, about 300 hams had been bought and greater than $12,000 was spent on the ultimate restoration of the organ, Mr Busso stated.
The challenge was named “Florus Solatium”, in honor of town’s supposed founder, a fifth-century saint named Florus, whose relics are enshrined within the cathedral. According to legendthe saint miraculously escaped the bandits by reaching the highest of the rock, the place the inhabitants welcomed him with conventional native ham. “Fast solatium!” he’s stated to have exclaimed. “What a consolation!”
Many of the leg growing older course of takes place at Altitude’s warehouses in a close-by city. However Mr Boyer, the previous rector, is satisfied that the three months they spend connected to the wood beams of the tower, uncovered to the wind and the vibrations of the bell, is what offers the meat its particular high quality.
“Most hams are cured in locations the place the hygrometry is all the time the identical, the air flow is all the time the identical,” stated Aurelien Grandsan, head chef at Serge Vieira Restaurantthe close by Michelin-starred restaurant, given the humidity within the air. Within the bell tower, he added: “you’ve gotten hesitations and that is what makes a product particular.”
The agency, pink flesh is nearly as good as one of the best prosciutto from Italy or jamón from Spain, he stated. Mr. Gransagne’s restaurant affords diners rose-shaped items of meat together with different appetizers — and a bit of backstory about its origins.
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 challenge unsafe.
“The constructing is for non secular practices,” he stated, “so it is less than the administration to inform us what we will or cannot do inside.”
The grease stain doubtless appeared on the century-old parquetry lengthy earlier than the hams had been imported, he stated.
“It is like a landlord telling a tenant that he isn’t allowed to maneuver the image in the lounge,” added Mr Rolland.
He made some minor modifications, equivalent to putting carpets on the flooring of the towers and barring guests. However radio amateurs will proceed to hold on, he stated.
In October, Ms. Dati, the tradition minister, introduced a call: The drumsticks would stay, supplied a “detailed examine” would look at the “administrative, materials and organizational circumstances” for the protected growing older of the drumsticks, her workplace stated in an electronic mail. This course of remains to be ongoing.
Regardless of the eventual resolution, the hams have develop 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 ham had been brisk. The Elysee Palace in Paris has a standing order of ham each three months and is serving slices of it at a buffet in June, Altitude says. (It’s unclear whether or not President Emmanuel Macron has tried any, and the Elysée didn’t reply to requests for remark.)
Nevertheless, not everybody in St.-Flour is proud of the thought of the church changing into one thing of a market.
“There have been bees, now there’s ham. What’s subsequent, cheese?” requested Roger Merle, 68, proprietor of a clothes retailer on the town.
