Will the real St. Valentine stand up

[Kevin Chilton]

Like all pre-mass communication celebrities, St. Valentine' identity is a little blurry. So much so, that it has never been established for which of the 3rd century martyrs associated with the 14th of February the first official Saint Valentine's Day in 496 AD was declared. Was it the Bishop of Terni (then called Interamna), the Valentine who died in Africa or the priest imprisoned and executed in Imperial Rome.

Folk history, it seems, chose, the young priest who “betrayed” the Emperor Claudius II in 270 AD by conducting secret wedding ceremonies between young people in the capital after the Emperor had forbidden them, claiming “married men made poor soldiers”. Valentine was eventually jailed and then beheaded but not, so the story goes, before falling in love with his jailer's daughter. It is said that on the evening of his execution she received his last message, which read "from your Valentine".

However, long before Christianity even appeared in Rome, the middle of February was associated with love and fertility. This was the time when the festival of Lupercus, the Roman god of fertility, was celebrated and, even longer before that, the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera in ancient Athens. Medieval Europe celebrated half way through the second month of the year when the birds began to pair, as the start of the mating season;

“For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.”
Chaucer's Parliament of Foules

Which after all, despite all the Christian hagiography and New romantic consumerism, is what it's all about.


So love long and prosper