Vendettas, nuraghi and the marches: Chocolat and Saint Genest

The following morning we traipsed further up the hill to Flavigny sur Ozerain. This, we then discovered, was the village where Chocolat was mostly filmed, a film I adored. We saw the shop and the house where Vianne set up her shop: La Chocolaterie Maya, and, in so doing, subtlety changed the life of the villagers.

This is the village where the Abbey de Flavigny (which once owned our camping space last night) is situated. There are remnants of many of the abbey buildings still surviving throughout the village, and with our usual good luck we are invited, with a French-speaking party, into the locked parish church of St Genest, and during the visit are occasionally thrown tidbits, in perfect English, by the excellent tour guide who was a local villager showing some friends around.

St Genest itself was left unharmed by French revolutionaries, while the Abbey Church (dedicated to St Peter) down the road suffered much damage. In renovations, the floor was replaced with flagstones filched from cemetery headstones, some of which bear graphic etchings representing the guilds of the tradesmen: including stonemasons, carpenters and butchers.

At the time the Vikings were sacking the surrounding villages here the relics of Ste Reine (Regina) were moved into this church which was more fortified. Her relics remain here to this day.

In the 15th century when the population of the town grew too large for the church its vaulted roof was raised and a second level, like a choir loft was added to the upper structure, making it quite unusual. All over are ancient frescoes, precious carved wooden choir stalls, and lovely statuettes and artifacts of antiquity. Very precious.

Pilgrims enroute to Santiago de Compostella whilst visiting St Reine's relics, turned this into an extremely rich parish. That was its heyday. At that time, too, the monks began making the delicious aniseed flavoured pastilles, Les Anis de Flavigny, which are still popular today. As we eat so did the pilgrims. By the 18th century, the Abbacy was so corrupt and in such disarray that a layman, who had little even to do with the town or the church, held the Abbey in his grasp.

Today there are fewer than 200 residents living in Flavigny (some Australians actually have summer homes here) but as it is now classed as one of the Most Beautiful Villages in France it is a very attractive spot, in season, for tourists and artisans the world over. Tucked in among the hills that Caesar won from the Gauls.

oooOOOooo