The Day of Love: A Lie

Hey Cherubs! Thanks for tuning in to my very late Valentine's Day post. I kind of ended up waiting for reasons outside of life, but I also wanted to make sure everybody got a chance to enjoy their discount candy and cheesy love notes before I ripped apart your image of Valentine's Day completely. That said, hold onto your Valentine's cards and teddy bears because we're jumping right into it.

Valentine's Day is a surprisingly old holiday, having been celebrated for the first time at the end of the 5th century, in 496 A.D. For those of you anti-Christian's who hate anything even remotely related to the religion, well you're about to have to hate Valentine's too. Valentine's Day was originally a Roman Catholic holiday, established by Pope Gelasius I, in honor of Christian martyr, St. Valentine. Now there are several different stories and legends about St. Valentine, and the Catholic Church recognizes at least 3 different men named Valentine, or Valentinus and all of them were considered martyrs. And yes, we're gonna go over all of the different legends.

Most people think of Valentine's Day and think of love and chocolate, flowers and stuffed animals, rose petals and sex, things of that nature. Nobody really thinks of Valentine's Day and thinks of death or even Christianity, but both of these things are key factors in the origin of the holiday. In fact, Valentine's Day is not actually a celebration of love, it's a celebration of death. On February 14th, several thousand years ago, all the way back to the 3rd century, several different men named Valentine were executed by the reigning Roman Emperor. So if Valentine's Day is actually a death anniversary, why do we celebrate love instead? Many different historians and scholars have ideas about why that is, but the legends of St. Valentine aren't as clear as the story behind other holidays.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a few different stories about the legend of St. Valentine and how this holiday came to be. One of these stories depicts St. Valentine as a pioneer for love. During the 3rd century, Emperor Claudius Gothicus outlawed marriage for young men and women because he believed marriage made men worse soldiers. Valentine, not agreeing with this, performed marriages in secret for young couples. This also caused many of these couples to convert to Christianity from Roman Paganism. As this was during a time when persecution of Christians was common, you can imagine how that blew over. Valentine was put in jail and executed by beheading. Another version of the legend claims that Valentine was put in jail for passing notes between jailed Christian lovers and when he was imprisoned inside the home of a family, he fell in love with a young blind girl whom he healed and converted the whole home to Christianity. This legend claims that before his execution, he wrote her a letter and signed it "from your Valentine." Some people even believe she later planted an almond tree where he was buried and that it stands today as a symbol of love. These stories cause many scholars to speculate that these stories are of the same man, but there are writings cited by many historians that corroborate the existence of two men with similar stories.

So how do we know what actually happened to St. Valentine, or who he was? Thanks to an order of Belgian monks, we have a pretty decent idea of what actually happened. This order of monks are called Bollandists, named after Jesuit priest Jean Bolland. in 1643, Bolland began publishing 68 volumes of writings, called "Acta Sanctorum" which means "lives of saints." The Bollandists continued his work, traveling the world and collecting every piece of information available on every saint on the church's public worship calendar. The last volume was published in 1940 and the volumes are arranged in chronological order to the saints' feast days. The Bollandists found that there were several different St. Valentine's executed on the 14th of February throughout the time of Emperor Claudius' reign. This makes sense, considering the name Valentine was a popular one for boys at the time. In the February 14th volume, there are 3 different men referenced as "Valentini", two of whom died during 269 and 270 A.D., the extent of the Claudius' rule. These 3 are the earliest known St. Valentine's to die on that day, and they all died during the 3rd century.

The earliest of the three men had no information about him to be found other than that he died in Africa with 24 other soldiers. The second of the Valentinus' comes from a late medieval legend that the Bolandists reprinted while also adding their own criticisms about its historical value. The tale is similar to the one I referenced before; Valentinus was arrested and left in the custody of an Aristocrat named Asterius. While in the care of Asterius, he preached to him about leading the pagans "out of the shadow of darkness." Asterius challenged the preacher to prove God's existence by healing his stepdaughter. He did so by placing his hands over her eyes and chanting a prayer. Valentinus' success in healing the girl caused the whole family to convert to Christianity, prompting Claudius to have them all executed, Valentinus the only one to be beheaded. The third Valentine had a similar story; however, this story claims he was a bishop of Terni in Umbria, Italy and was imprisoned for debating a potential convert and then healing his son. The rest of the story is relatively similar, including the decapitation death and being buried along an ancient highway then-known as Via Flaminia, which is supposedly the site of Valentine's martyrdom. The Bollandists suggested that the Valentinus' in these last two stories are actually the same man and that different versions appeared in both Rome and Terni. Regardless, there was never a Valentine whose story centered around love, or even involved love, but remember the first Valentine's Day wasn't until the end of the 5th century, over 100 years later. It was actually medieval legends that depicted St. Valentine as a priest who performed the aforementioned secret weddings and passed notes. It was also those same stories that had him romantically involved with the young blind girl, though the Bollandists pointed out that these versions of the story had no historical basis in the 3rd century. With the help of modern media continuing to circulate these stories, the true gory history of Valentine's Day was eventually forgotten. So in truth, when Pope Gelasius decided to give St. Valentine his holiday he likely knew there was no basis for the romantic allusions in 3rd century history, but do you really think medieval Christians gave a fuck about a historical basis? I can assure you that they didn't and they aren't exactly known for it either. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, "What they cared about were stories of miracles and martyrdoms, and the physical remains or relics of the saints." What they are known for is there obsession with stealing Pagan holidays and reworking them to spread Christianity, which brings me to a Pagan holiday called Lupercalia, which was conveniently well underway when Valentine was executed.

Lupercalia was celebrated from 13th through to the 15th of February. If you happen to be into BDSM, then this holiday might've been your thing. On the first night of the feast, an order of Roman Pagan priests called Luperci gathered at a sacred cave where it was said the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were cared for as infants by a lupa, a she-wolf. Here, the Luperci sacrificed a goat and a dog, the goat was for fertility, while the dog was for purity. This was just one of many rituals that rural masculine cults performed, but it later evolved into a sort of urban carnival. Although, carnival probably describes the part where the men proceed to run naked through the streets with the strips of freshly-skinned goat hide that they dipped into sacrificial blood. The men not only ran through the streets with them, but they also used to hit the crops and pregnant women with them because it was believed that this would ensure a good harvest, as well as a healthy baby for the expecting mothers. The BDSM joke I made earlier is in reference to the fact men would also whip young women with the goat hides. Not only did women welcome this, they lined up for it. Lupercalia ended with all the young women putting their names into an urn for the young men to pick out. Whichever name got picked out, that girl and the boy who picked her were then paired for the rest of the festival. If the match was good, they were paired for several days or a year and many of these pairs ended in marriage. Lupercalia was eventually outlawed when Christians were trying to spread the religion again, and it was actually outlawed by the same person who established Valentine's Day: Pope Gelasius I. This leads many historians to believe that this was done intentionally to promote the spread of Christianity, but there's nothing to prove that it was more than just a coincidence.

The romantic connection to Valentine's Day is believed to have actually been made much later thanks to the old author of The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer. He also wrote Parlement of Foules, a poem written over a thousand years after the deaths of the Saints Valentine and contains one of the earliest references to the idea that Valentine's Day is for two lovers. In the poem, which consists of roughly 700 lines, Chaucer claims that Valentine's Day was the day for bird mating. It was around this time in February that said birds would fly off to mate and produce their eggs, which also became noticeable to the nature-loving European nobles, who began sending each other love letters during the bird mating season. The nobles addressed each other in the letters as, you guessed it, Valentines. Overtime, love letters became the tradition for the holiday and "Valentine" went from being simply a proper noun associated with a young man to a common noun meaning someone you have a romantic interest in or a gift given on Valentine's Day. Scholars also believe that the story of St. Valentine was likely confused with Galatin's Day, a holiday celebrated by the Normans around the same time. It would make sense, since Galatin means "lover of women." Parlement of Foules was just the beginning though, Shakespeare also played a huge part in establishing Valentine's Day as a day of love. One example is in Hamlet, when the character Ophelia refers to herself as Hamlet's valentine. Eventually, the English began giving each other actual cards, handmade of course, when the holiday was brought over to "The New World" (aka the Americas. Nothing about it was new). Then, in 1913, everyone's favorite store with a bad taste in music and the favorite go-to for cards of all kind, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City began mass producing Valentine's cards (NPR), which further solidified February 14th as a day of love, romance, and fertility.

Now personally, I have no problem believing that Pope Gelasius wanted to spread Christianity while simultaneously getting rid of any religion that would oppose it. I'm almost positive that's what happened, and I believe that because I've read about enough Pagan holidays stolen by medieval Christian's to know not to put it past them. I'm not a scholar, though, I'm just a writer who looks for the writings of scholars and puts it together in one article. So you don't have to take my word for it, and I'd love to hear from you guys. What do you think is true? And which St. Valentine legend do you like or believe? Have you heard any of them before? Feel free to give me feedback and tell me what you know about Valentine's Day's dark history. And if you have any other forgotten Pagan holidays you want me to talk about, feel free to let me know. Until next time cherubs!