The traditions of St. Valentine’s Day mix elements of both ancient Roman rites and Christian tradition. To confuse matters, three different saints named Valentine are recognised by the Catholic Church. Valentine may not be the luckiest of names, as all three of the saints are martyrs.
One legend tells us that Valentine was a priest in Rome during the third century. Emperor Claudius II decreed that marriage was to be outlawed for young men, as he thought that single men made better soldiers than those who were married with families.
Valentine felt the decree was unjust and unfair and he defied the Emperor by performing secret marriages for young lovers. When his actions for undercover lovers were discovered, Claudius ordered Valentine to be executed. Variations on this legend say that Valentine was put to death for trying to help fellow Christians escape from harsh Roman prisons where they were often tortured.
According to another legend, Valentine may have actually sent the first ‘valentine’ greeting himself in 270 AD the day before he was to be executed for refusing to renounce his Christian beliefs. Allegedly he sent a note of appreciation to his jailer’s blind daughter for bringing him food and delivering messages while he was imprisoned, signed “from your Valentine.”
While we can never be certain as to the true origin of the St. Valentine legend, one thing is for certain, it must have been an appealing and enduring story because by the Middle Ages, Valentine had become one of the most popular saints in France and Britain.
The timing observance of his saint’s day may have been driven by the commonplace practice of trying to integrate previous pagan festivals into the Christian calendar. in this case, the Lupercalia festival.
In ancient Rome, February was seen as the beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and wheat throughout the interiors (we still refer to Spring Cleaning to this day).
Lupercalia, which began on the ‘ides (15th) of February’, was a fertility festival dedicated to the agricultural god Lupercus and to the Goddess of Love, Juno, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. Roman maidens placed their names into an urn set up in the public squares and young single men drew from it to get a ‘blind date’ for the coming year. More often than not, these annual matches often ended in marriage.
St. Valentine’s Day was set at February 14th by Pope Gelasiusin 498AD. By this time, the ‘lottery’ system for romantic dating was deemed un-Christian and had been outlawed. During the Middle Ages, the practice of love lotteries carried on as ‘Chance Boxes’. In France, drawings from the boxes allotted couples one year to get married or part company. In England, it was a common practice for men to wear the name of the girl they drew from the chance boxes on their sleeve, encircled with a heart.
Also at this time, it was commonly believed in parts of England and France that February 14 marked the beginning of birds’ mating season, which increased the notion that Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.
Valentines messages started to appear around the beginning of the Fifteenth century, and even in these formative times, they were often given anonymously, perhaps harking back to the unknown recipients of the Roman lotteries.