The Catholic Church recognises at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus. One account suggests that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. At the time, Emperor Claudius II believed that single men made better soldiers, so he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, ever the romantic and realising how unjust the decree was, defied his emperor and performed marriages for young lovers in secret. When discovered, Valentine was sentenced to death.
Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape the harsh conditions in Roman prisons, where beatings and torture were widespread.
One legend tells how he actually sent the first valentine from prison after falling in love with a young girl (possibly the jailor’s daughter). Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. We may never uncover the whole story, but all the accounts paint him as a sympathetic, heroic and romantic figure.
By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.
The choice of February to commemorate love may have been to coincide with the anniversary of his death or burial (around 270 AD). Others say that they Christian church organised a feast day in February to join or ‘Christianise’ the pagan celebration of Lupercalia; the fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture.
At Lupercalia, priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day in the fifth century. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.
Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written valentines didn’t appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following 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, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.