Many of us have come to look on Valentine’s Day as a marketer’s dream for greeting cards, candy-makers and florists. However, no one is quite certain how February 14 came to be associated with love.
The feast day of St. Valentine was first established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD; however, the Saint Valentine that appears in various martyrologies in connection with February 14 is described either as:
- A priest in Rome,
- A bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), or
- A martyr in the Roman province of Africa.[8]
Martyrdom aside, evidence of saintliness is so scant that the modern Catholic Church removed the feast day of Saint Valentine on February 14 from the General Roman Calendar.
With such a sketchy genesis, could it be that St. Valentine’s Day was yet another pagan celebration subsumed by early Christians to keep the festivities and co-opt the significance?
Possibly.
Ancient Romans observed Lupercalia from February 13 to 15.
The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci (or the flamen dialis) of two male goats and a dog. Next two young patrician Luperci were led to the altar to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh.
The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth.
The first recorded association of Valentine’s Day with romantic love is in Parlement of Foules(1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer wrote:
For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
["For this was Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."]
In the Medieval period and English Renaissance, a “High Court of Love” was established in Paris on Valentine’s Day in 1400. The court dealt with love contracts, betrayals and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of a poetry reading.
The celebration of Valentine’s Day has continued thus to present times – the day we devote to expressing our appreciation to our beloved ones with food and small tokens of affection.
Like all “holy days,” perhaps it survives because we need it. However you observe Valentine’s Day, let your heart be true to love.
