Struggling to raise funds for the restoration of his cathedral’s antique organ, a priest from St.-Flour, a small town in France’s heartland, came up with a creative solution. He turned one of the bell towers into a curing workshop where farmers could hang their hams to dry. For nearly two years, after being blessed by a local bishop, pork legs swayed in peace in the dry air of the cathedral’s north tower, bringing in much-needed funds and delighting charcuterie lovers.
After noticing a grease stain on the floor of the bell tower, as well as other infractions, an inspector for the organization that oversees France’s architectural heritage ordered that the hams be taken down. They were a fire hazard, he said. When the cathedral refused to remove the hams, the dispute escalated all the way to the country’s minister of culture, Rachida Dati.
The battle over the St.-Flour hams was widely derided as an example of how overzealous officials can quash innovative local initiatives. It also spoke to a larger issue that aging churches across France have been grappling with as they face costly restorations: who is going to pay to maintain the country’s vast religious heritage?
After the French Revolution, church properties were seized by the state, which eventually took responsibility for overseeing most of them. But the central government and local municipalities have struggled to fund the maintenance of the country’s cathedrals and churches.
Despite a decline in church attendance, towns like St.-Flour, which has a population of about 6,400, see their cathedrals and churches as defining elements of their identities and feel a strong need to maintain them.
Maintaining the cathedral itself was seen as an essential, if costly, town effort. St.-Flour is at the heart of Cantal, an area of France known for its green hilly landscapes and its local cheese. From a distance, the cathedral, at the top of rocky outcrop, looms over the town like a fortress.
The idea for the curing workshop in the bell tower was the brainchild of Gilles Boyer, who was at the time the cathedral’s rector, after funds that were supposed to be provided by the authorities for repairing the church’s 19th-century choir organ never materialized.
A food lover who had once managed a restaurant in Paris, Mr. Boyer had already set up beehives on an unused terrace of the cathedral to produce honey for sale. The bell tower was also unused space. Why not use it for hanging hams, a specialty of the region, he wondered?
It all started as a joke, but it wasn’t so dumb after all. Altitude, a local charcuterie cooperative made up of some 40 pig breeders, loved the idea, partly for the marketing potential, but also for what they believed to be the special quality of the air and conditions in the tower for curing hams.
Most of the maturation process for the hams takes place in Altitude warehouses in a nearby town. But Mr. Boyer, the former rector, is convinced that the three months they spend attached to the tower’s wooden beams, exposed to the wind and to the bell’s vibrations, is what gives the meat its special quality.
The thick, rosy flesh, is as good as the best prosciutto from Italy or jamón from Spain, said Aurélien Gransagne, the chef at Restaurant Serge Vieira, a nearby Michelin-starred restaurant.
The project was called “Florus Solatium,” a tribute to the town’s supposed founder, a fifth-century saint called Florus whose relics are kept in the cathedral. According to legend, the saint miraculously escaped bandits by reaching the top of the cliff, where residents welcomed him with a traditional local ham. “Quid solatium!” he was said to have exclaimed. “What a solace!”
Most hams are dried in places where the hygrometry is always the same, the ventilation is always the same. In the bell tower, you have fluctuations, and that’s what makes a product special.
Given the success of the tower-cured hams, Jean-Paul Rolland, who took over as rector from Mr. Boyer in 2022, said he decided to put his foot down when the heritage architect declared the project dangerous.
The grease stain probably appeared on the age-old parquet floor long before the hams were brought up, he said. It’s like the landlord telling a tenant that he is not allowed to change a painting’s place in the living room.
He did make some small changes, like placing carpets on the floor of the towers and barring access to visitors. But the hams would continue to hang, he said.
In October, Ms. Dati, the culture minister, announced a decision: The hams will stay, provided a “detailed study” will have examined the “administrative, material and organizational conditions” for the hams to be matured safely, her office said in an email. That process is still continuing.
Whatever the eventual decision, the hams have become something of a cause célèbre in a country that values the gastronomic offerings of small producers as much as the country’s religious heritage. St.-Flour made national headlines, and sales of the hams have been brisk. The Élysée Palace in Paris has a standing order for hams every three months, and served slices of it at a buffet in June, Altitude says. (It is not clear if President Emmanuel Macron tried some, and the Elysée did not respond to requests for comment.)
Not everyone in St.-Flour is happy with the idea of turning the church into something of a marketplace. “There were bees, now there’s hams. What’s next, cheese?” asked Roger Merle, 68, the owner of a clothing store in the town.
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