History Of Valentine's Day
Jonathon Andrews
The most popular story heard, is about a priest Saint Valentine in third century Rome. The emperor at that time, Claudius, believed that unmarried men made the best soldiers so he outlawed marriages. However, Saint Valentine kept performing marriages to young lovers in secret. Once this was discovered he was sentenced to death. One legend states that Valentine fell in love with the jailor’s daughter and before his death he wrote a letter and signed it, “From your Valentine”.
While some may suspect that February 14th is the date St. Valentine was killed or buried this is likely untrue. Some believe the Christian church put the St. Valentine feast day in the middle of February to draw attention away from a pagan festival known as Lupercalia. This festival was to celebrate fertility for the Roman god Faunus. People used the hides of sacrificed goats to gently hit women. They believed this touch would grant them a more fertile year. Later on, the women’s names were placed in an urn, where single men randomly picked the names and then were matched with the woman they chose for the next year. This match usually resulted in a marriage.
This festival was later banned because it was “un-Christian” near the end of the fifth century. This was when Pope Gelasius declared February 14th to be St. Valentine’s Day, although it wasn’t affiliated with love until the Middle Ages. Around this time it was believed that February 14th was the start of birds’ mating season in England. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem first referencing Valentine’s Day with the association of love, “For this was on Saint Valentine’s day / When every fowl comes there his mate to take”. Written valentines started to be exchanged in the early 1400s.
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History.com Editors. (2009, December 22). History of Valentine's Day. Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day/history-of-valentines-day-2
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