Who was Valentine's Day? Between history and legend of the saint most invoked by lovers

The story of Valentine's Day - and the story of its patron saint - is shrouded in mystery. We know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance and that Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both the Christian tradition and the ancient Roman tradition. But who was Valentine's Day, and how did he associate himself with this ancient rite? The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints called Valentine or Valentinus, all martyred. A legend claims that Valentino was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men were better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young people. Valentino, realizing the injustice of the decree, challenged Claudio and continued to celebrate weddings for young lovers in secret. When Valentino's shares were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Still others insist that it was San Valentino da Terni, a bishop, the real namesake of the party. He too was beheaded by Claudius II outside Rome. Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for trying to help Christians escape from the harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to a legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first "Valentine" to greet himself after falling in love with a young girl - possibly his jailer's daughter - who had visited him during his captivity. Before his death, he is alleged to have written her a letter signed "From your Valentine", an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine's Day legends is obscure, all the stories emphasize his charm as an understanding, heroic, and most importantly, romantic figure. In the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this fame, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.

Origins of Valentine's Day: a pagan festival in February
While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in mid-February to commemorate the anniversary of St. Valentine's death or burial, which likely occurred around AD 270, others say the Christian church may have decided to place the holiday of Valentine's Day in the middle of February in an attempt to "Christianize" the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated on the Ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faun, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. To begin the feast, the members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, gathered in a sacred cave where it was believed that the children Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, had been cared for by a she-wolf. The priests would have sacrificed a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. Then they stripped the goatskin in strips, dipped them in sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both the women and the cultivated fields with goatskin. Far from being scary, Roman women welcomed the touch of skins because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. In the course of the day, according to the legend, all the young women of the city would have placed their names in a large urn. The bachelors of the city would each choose a name and be mated for the year with the chosen woman.

The Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity but were outlawed - as deemed "non-Christian" - at the end of the 14th century, when Pope Gelasius declared Valentine's Day on February 14. It wasn't until much later, however, that the day was definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 1375 was the start of bird mating season, which added to the idea that mid-Valentine's Day should be a day for romance. The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record Valentine's Day as a romantic celebration day in his 1400 poem "Parliament of Foules", writing: "For this was sent on Valentine's Day / Whan every phallus comes to choose his mate. Valentine's greetings were popular since the Middle Ages, although Valentine's Day didn't start appearing until after 1415. The oldest known Valentine's Day still in existence was a poem written in XNUMX by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London after his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years later, King Henry V is believed to have hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a Valentine's card to Catherine of Valois.