Every
February 14, around the world, chocolates, flowers and gifts are exchanged
between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine.
But who is this mysterious saint, and where
did these traditions come from?
The Legend of St. Valentine
The
history of Valentine's Day--and the story of its patron saint--is shrouded in
mystery. We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of
romance, and that St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges
of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and
how did he become associated with this ancient rite?
The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.
The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.
One legend contends that Valentine
was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius
II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families,
he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the
decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in
secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be
put to death.
Father Valentine in Rome
Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured.
According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the
first "valentine" greeting himself after he fell in love with a young
girl--possibly his jailor's daughter--who visited him during his confinement.
Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed "From
your Valentine," an expression that is still in use today.
Although the
truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his
appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and--most importantly--romantic figure. By the Middle
Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one
of the most popular saints in England and France.
Origins of Valentine's Day: A Pagan Festival in
February
While
some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to
commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial--which probably
occurred around A.D. 270--others claim that the Christian church may have
decided to place St. Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an
effort to "Christianize" the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.
Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility
festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the
Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would
gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of
Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests
would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then
strip the goat's hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take
to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide.
Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it
was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day,
according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in
a big urn. The city's bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for
the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
Lupercalia
survived the initial rise of Christianity but was outlawed—as it was deemed
“un-Christian”--at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared
February 14 St. Valentine's Day.
(It was
first established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD, and was later deleted from the General
Roman Calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI.)
It was not until much later, however, that the
day became definitively associated with love.
During the Middle Ages, it was
commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of
birds' mating season, which added to the idea that Valentine's
Day should be a day for romance.
Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written
Valentine's didn't begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine
still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of
Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following
his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the
manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years
later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to
compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.
In Great Britain, Valentine's Day
began to be popularly celebrated around the 17th century. By the middle of the
18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange
small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began
to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology.
Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a
time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage
rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine's
Day greetings.
Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In
the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines
in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate
creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as
"scrap." Valentine's Day is the second largest card-sending holiday of the year.
Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
- Aristotle
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone
deeply gives you courage.
- Lao Tzu
My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to
thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.
- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still
only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as
coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
- Henry Ward Beecher
Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you
from age.
- Anais Nin
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in
looking outward in the same direction.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs
have desires, let these be your desires; To melt and be like a running brook
that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To
be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and
joyfully.
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even
touched. They must be felt with the heart.
-Helen Keller
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I
love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.
- Leo Tolstoy
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays.
Clutch it, and it darts away.
- Dorothy Parker
I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my
heart.
- Alice Walker
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you
straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know
no other way than this: where I does not exist nor you, so close that your hand
on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
- Pablo Neruda, "Love Sonnet XVII"
1 Corinthians 13
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all
knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not
have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
