There are actually 3 saints named Valentin or Valentinus, all of which were martyred and collectively given February 14 as their saint’s (saints’) day. There are various legends about them; here are the basic facts about the most likely Valentine to have precipitated what we now know as Valentine’s Day.
St. Valentinus (which means strong) was likely a bishop (but for sure a priest) born in 226 A.D. in Umbria (Italy), patron saint of epileptics and bee keepers.
At this time the Roman Empire was overwhelmed with migrants (Goths) due to the encroaching Mongol wars in the East. Unlike super-powers today, Rome had no connection with, much less control over the foreign wars and their many refugees.
Roman Emperor Claudius II, called “Cruel Claude,” signed a rash our equivalent of executive orders, making marriage illegal, banishing all Jews from Rome, and basically doing startling things seemingly intended to tear at people’s lives.
Predictably, Claudius didn’t last very long as emperor — just over 1 year.
The reason for the odd marriage ban was that there was an engrained tradition that once a man married, he was no longer eligible for military service — single men were thought to make better soldiers. (The bible also says that men who marry are not to be taken into military service until 1 year after the marriage.) But Rome needed more soldiers, so banning marriage altogether seemed rational enough to him.
When Valentinus secretly continued to marry people anyway, he was arrested, taken to Rome, and jailed at the home of a nobleman.
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Valentinus decided to tell the nobleman the story of Jesus, to which the nobleman replied that if what he says is true he should prove it by healing his blind daughter. The daughter was brought to Valentinus, he laid hands on her, prayed, and her sight was restored.
Before Valentinus was tortured and martyred on February 14, 269 A.D., he is said to have left a note with a blessing for the healed girl, signed “Your Valentinus.”
So how did St. Valentine come to be associated with romance?
Frankly, we don’t know. St. Valentine’s Day has become huge in the last 20 years, even though it was never intended to be a holiday at all. But here are some ideas about how it could have come about and some important mile markers.
Feb. 13-15 were feast days dedicated to Pan (Lupercalia) in Ancient Rome. But the fertility celebration was for domesticated animals and their offspring, not for humans.
The tradition of associating St. Valentine with love may be related to the fact that the saint’s burial place in Rome happens to be where the moon festival Anna Parenna (which means long life) was celebrated on the Ides of March (March 15), the start of the Roman New Year. People would camp out in tents and drink wine well into the night to insure a long life and a prosperous new year.
Centuries later, Chaucer helped put St. Valentine’s Day on the map by mentioning it in association with “choose his mate,” but he’s writing about birds.
In “A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare mentions St. Valentine’s Day referring to lovers.
In England in the 18th century it became popular to exchange love letters and notes on St. Valentine’s Day. But the holiday really took off once a stationery store in the US started mass producing “mechanical valentines” in the 1850s.
Soon the chocolate industry and florists would hop on the bandwagon. Richard Cadbury is believed to be the first to create heart-shaped boxes so beautiful they could be re-used. In the 1980s, jewelers and the diamond industry got into the act.
When the Roman Empire fell, St. Valentine was declared a saint for his sacrifice in defending love and the sacrament of marriage. But interestingly, when the Catholic Church updated its calendar of saint’s days in 1969, St. Valentine was omitted! Although the day is still commemorated in the Anglican and Lutheran calendars, they are not holidays, meaning the holiday exists only in practice and popular imagination.
