Oh My darling Valentine
The history of Valentines Day is much more interesting than first thought. Legends of paganism, religion, tragedy, sacrifice and of course love & romance, makes this celebration day worthy of a feature film!
Also called The Feast of St Valentine, February 14 was a day established by the Pope in 496AD to honour St Valentine of Rome who died on that day in 269AD. St Valentine was imprisoned for ministering to persecuted Christians during the Roman empire and it is told that while in prison he wrote the jailer's daughter a letter signed "Your Valentine" as a farewell before his execution.
Even more grisly, are claims ( with little evidence according to Wikipedia ), that Valentines Day originated from the pagan festival of Lupercalia. In ancient Rome every year, between February 13 and 15, Romans celebrated Lupercalia and the coming of spring by sacrificing animals and slapping women with their hides, which was believed to make them more fertile.
So far, no Valentines Day gift boxes, chocolates or roses in sight. You may well ponder where is all the Love associated with Valentines Day?
Some suggest that Saint Valentine performed clandestine Christian weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. The Roman Emperor Claudius II supposedly forbade this in order to grow his army, believing that married men did not make for good soldiers. However, George Monger writes that this marriage ban was never issued and that Claudius II told his soldiers to take two or three women for themselves after his victory over the Goths. According to legend, in order "to remind these men of their vows and God's love, Saint Valentine is said to have cut hearts from parchment", giving them to these soldiers and persecuted Christians, a possible origin of the widespread use of hearts on St. Valentine's Day.
And what of Cupid?
Saint Valentine supposedly wore a purple amethyst ring, customarily worn on the hands of Christian bishops with an image of Cupid engraved in it, a recognizable symbol associated with love that was legal under the Roman Empire. Roman soldiers would recognize the ring and ask him to perform marriage for them. Probably due to the association with Saint Valentine, amethyst has become the birthstone of February, which is thought to attract love.
For the Poets
The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is believed to be in the Parliament of Fowls (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer, portraying a parliament for birds to choose their mates Honoring the first anniversary of the engagement of fifteen-year-old King Richard II of England to fifteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer wrote :
"For this was on Saint Valentine's Day
When every bird comes there to choose his match
Of every kind that men may think of
And that so huge a noise they began to make
That earth and air and tree and every lake
Was so full, that not easily was there space
For me to stand—so full was all the place."
And of course what would life & love be without Shakespeare:
“To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more."
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5
Fast forward to modern times……
Valentines Day cards verses and poems became so popular in England in the early 19th century that they started making them in factories, "Cupid's Manufactory" as Charles Dickens termed it.
Today we are bombarded with adverts of expensive gifts, chocolates and roses, particularly red roses, a symbol of beauty and love. Well why not I say, bring it on eh girls!!!! :)
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