Valentine’s Day originated with the canonization of Valentino di Terni by Pope Gelasius in 496 CE in commemoration of his martyrdom. Valentino was a religious community leader under Roman rule, when being a Christian was illegal. He was arrested by the Roman authorities for his Christian faith and sentenced to death by Emperor Claudius on February 14, 269 CE; the date of his sainthood dedication.
Valentino was reputed to have given a young woman a dowry in order to enable her to marry the man she loved. Without the dowry she would have been condemned to remain celibate for the rest of her life as a social outcast. The gift was meant to elevate the union between a man and a woman as the highest form of love, procreating the sacredness of life.
Saint Valentine’s canonization was meant to promote marriage as a church sacramental ceremony. It was also a way to convert Roman religio by the emerging Church. Namely to overshadow a popular pagan ritual of Lupercalia that was celebrated in mid February.
Lupercalia was an ancient Roman fertility and purification festival. The ritual consisted of the sacrifice of a dog and a goat. The pelts of the sacrificed animals were worn by a naked man and woman. Both held vegetable roots, representing nature’s seasonal cycle of death and rebirth. Part of the festival included the pelt covered couple running around Rome’s Palatino hill. While the main focus of the festivities surrounded the woman’s sensual dance, invoking eroticism and celebrating fertility.
The celebration of saints like Valentine was part of a widespread promotion by the newly founded Church of Saint Peter (the Rock) in Rome to spread Christian faith throughout the Holy Roman Empire.
Over the ages, the popularity of Saint Valentine spread throughout Christendom and inspired numerous popular narratives of courteous love and chivalry during the Middle Ages. And later novels depicting romantic love like Tristan and Isolde of the 12th century. And during the 16th century stories like the one written by Luigi da Porto entitled Giuletta e Romeo that was made popular by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Saint Valentine inspired various legends and evolved throughout the centuries. All versions are dedicated to the passionate love and uncontrollable attraction between two human beings.
Today, Valentine’s Day is another example of the secularization of a Holy-day into a commercial holiday. What was at the outset a fertility ritual converted by the Church into a sacramental union between a man and a woman, as a celebration of the procreation of life, has been supplanted by a commercial exploitation of love and sexual promiscuity; parting with the genetic thrust to procreate human life.
Time for a corny video break.
Gary B: Bitter Sweet
