Valentines Day

an ancient tale

Despite all of its attempts over hundreds of years, the church has never been able to accomplish the Christianization of Valentines day. It remains to this day, a thinly disguised celebration of Eros and erotic love. It is the cupid, an avatar of Eros which adorns Valentine's Day cards, not images of an obscure bishop from North Africa. We send cards and gifts to those whom we hold in affection not to prisoners in jail as St. Valentine is said to have done. As always, Eros triumphs even over the gods.

The tales are many and each has many variations, but there is a basic common thread in which we may be able to perceive the roots of the story. Each of the old stories tells of a man named Valentine who was a Roman soldier in the late 4th century under the emperor Claudius II, who in defiance of the emperors edict forbidding soldiers of Rome to be married, continued to perform marriage ceremonies for his men and each tells of his execution for this. All include the tale of a final note sent from prison to his beloved signed,"From Your Valentine." In this and this alone all are agreed, but the tale is variously and often romantically embroidered in differing ways.

One particularly florid version has Valentine falling in love with his jail keeper's daughter, a beautiful and young blind girl who visited him in her father's jail. The power of love quite naturally cures the girls blindness so that she is able to read his last note to her before he is stoned to death and then beheaded.

This is the very sort of romantic tale which would most certainly have appealed to Roman masses and the story continued to be told into medieval times when love notes were often signed,From Your Valentine, an allusion to the ancient love story. In 1415, Charles, duke of Orleans when he was imprisoned in The Tower Of London is said to have sent a note to his wife signed, From Your Valentine. The lady would at once have understood the classical reference which is lost now a days.

The story of Valentine became associated with the festival of Lupercalia which was an ancient fertility festival which predated the founding of Rome. It was held every year on the 15th of February on the Palatine at the cave of Lupercal where dogs and goats were sacrificed to Faunas. Two patrician youths were dressed in the skins of the sacrificed animals ran through the streets with lashes and and whipped the girls gathered there to ensure their fertility. These young men were called, the Februa and it is from this name that we get the name for the month of February.

There was a custom of young unmarried women putting their names written on scraps of paper into a container from which the young men would extract them. The chosen girl would become the young man's lover for a year and this may have been the root of Valentine messages.The Roman Catholic Church, as may be imagined took a rather dim view of these practices and changed the custom by putting the names of saints into the container and the lucky young man now got a new patron saint for the year rather than a girl.

It is here that the legend of St. Valentine first appears. There are at least 3 different St. Valentines listed in early church writings as having a feast day of February 14th all, conveniently were martyrs and close enough to February 15th as to be quite handy. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius officially set aside February 14 to honor St. Valentine thereby Christianizing Lupercalia and creating a new Christian holiday. The stories of St. Valentine had already begun to take on some of the aspects of the old pagan tale. St. Valentine became a bishop either of Interamma in Italy or from somewhere in North Africa and was said to have frequently visited those who were about to martyred in jail and to have passed them notes of encouragement (valentines). Thus, over the centuries, the names of available young women became acts of Christian piety.

And so Lupercalia was still celebrated as it had been since before the founding of Rome and continues to be celebrated to this day. Although it has been moved from February 15th to February 14th and properly Christianized, the little notes and gifts have returned to the province of Eros and still express romantic affection. " Le loup retourne toujours au bois." (The wolf always returns to the woods).

Happy Valentine's Day, or is it yet, Lupercalia ?