Someone once wrote that "there are more tales of the origins of Valentine's Day than arrows in Cupid's quiver." I haven't yet made out exactly who it was, but he was most definitely right on this one - more than right - as I found out for myself, when I tried to research the subject in order to write this article in time for Valentine's Day.
Lupercalia - A Roman Festival
Valentine's Day seems to have its origin in the Roman feasts of the goddess Juno Februa (Greek goddess Hera) and the god Lupercus (Greek god Pan, and later Faunus), whose feasts were held on the 14th and the 15th of February respectively. It seems that the celebration of these feasts date back to the third Century B.C. and that they were celebrated yearly for as long as 800 years at a stretch until Lupercalia, as the festival was jointly known, was eradicated by Pope Gelasius in 496 A.D. Apparently, Lupercalia stretched on for three days, from the 13th to the 15th, both days inclusive, and this was the festival to be attending every mid-February in those far off days.
The Roman God Lupercus is described as the god of agriculture - a pastoral god who kept shepherds and herds under his wing, and protected them from harm, as well as seeing to other agricultural issues, like crops, harvests etc. In those days, harm usually came in the form of attacks by wolves (lupi) upon the herds and their shepherds, as the area outside Rome's wall was heavily populated by wolves. The celebrations involved the sacrifice of a dog and two goats, the hides of which were cut into strips. High priests, members of a sect of Lupercus, then ran through the streets striking women with the hides. This was thought to confer fertility on the women.
February was held, by the Romans, to be the beginning of spring and of the agricultural season, which is why the festival in honour of Lupercus was held in mid-February. It was therefore a celebration of agricultural fertility at a time when spring was beginning and the birds (supposedly) started looking for their mates. Who could ask for more, then, than the feast of Juno Februa (goddess of women and fertility) being held on the eve of the day? The whole of Lupercalia became a feast of "sexual license" where young men and women, who were normally strictly segregated, were allowed to mix. In honour of Juno (on the 14th), a ritual was organised during which the names of maidens were drawn out of an urn, and the matching of couples took place. The couples were expected to be each other's sweethearts for the rest of the year.
More research into the origins of the feast of Juno Februa shows that the Romans probably held these archaic rites in honour of fertility after the Greeks, who dedicated the month of Gamilion (which spanned from mid-January to mid-February) to the marriage of Zeus with Hera (Juno), so that it is quite possible that the feast, in fact, has origins which date back to much earlier than 300 B.C.
The Christians enter the Picture
So how did a pagan, Roman festival in honour of fertility, love and new life get to be named after St. Valentine?
The answer to this is not simple. It seems that no one is even sure who St. Valentine was exactly, although the facts point almost certainly in one direction. Apparently up to eleven St. Valentines exist, as Valentine was a very popular name during the early Christian era. However, three of these were martyred on February the 14th. One of these lived and was martyred in Africa, and is therefore not suspect. One of the other two Valentines was a popular priest of the early Church who lived in Rome and was imprisoned and sentenced to death by Emperor Claudius (II) Gothicus also known as Claudius the Cruel, and probably with ample reason. This Valentine was martyred, courtesy of Claudius, in the year 270 A.D. and buried somewhere along the Via Flaminia.
It is hazy whether the third Valentine ever really existed as a separate person (in this case a bishop who was martyred some years later) or whether he was really the same person as the second Valentine, but all in all, the second St. Valentine seems to be the real thing after all.
The story goes that Claudius II was vigorously looking for men to swell the ranks of his army, which was having to stave off attacks against his Empire at an alarming rate. He became obsessed by the idea that married and betrothed men were too heavily tied in an emotional way to their wives and children, or sweethearts (as the case may have been), so he outlawed marriage amongst men who were of an age which allowed them to be useful in his army. Valentine was against this law, and started meeting the couples in secret and marrying them himself. He was caught and thrown into jail, where he died (270 A.D.).
Of course other stories abound. One story says that Valentine was involved in helping Christians escape the wrath of Claudius, and therefore certain death. He was thrown into prison but Claudius was taken by the priest and tried to convert him to paganism, trying to save him from death. Valentine was steadfast in his Faith, and instead tried to convert Claudius himself to Christianity, for which he was eventally sentenced and killed.
Another story in the Catholic tradition goes that, whilst he was in prison, Valentine cured his jailor's (Asterius) daughter of her blindness and befriended her. Before being killed he sent her a farewell note with the words, "From your Valentine" - words which have supposedly lived on in the usual Valentine's Day greetings. Protestant tradition coincides with all this except for the miracle cure, which they deny.
Whichever story is true, come 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius abolished the festival of Lupercalia and the heathen practice of drawing women's names in a lottery, and instead of it established the Feast of the martyr, St. Valentine. Each February young men were now expected to pick out the names of saints from the urn, instead of lovers, and emulate the lives of the saint they would have picked throughout the following year. For obvious reasons this was not successful, and the idea was dropped within a few years, St. Valentine eventually becoming the patron saint of lovers, and his feast day becoming the time for lovers to exchange messages of love (valentines), and later gifts.
The Spread of a Tradition
Lupercalia is thought to have been exported to Britain when the Romans invaded Britain, with the old pagan tradition of drawing names, by chance, to find a sweetheart still intact in early 20th Century Britain. At that time, in Lancashire, for example, it was still customary for young people to be divided into two groups, according to their sex. Each youngster then drew a name (a boy for the girls and a girl for the boys). At the end of the process each person had two sweethearts, and it was up to them to work out which was the best match for them. After the final decision was made, the boys treated the girls to gifts and surprises, including invitations to dances and outings, for a year.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the traditions tied to St. Valentine's Day spread with the spreading of Christianity, reaching all parts of the World.
It is, indeed, fascinating how the tradition of drawing names seems to have extended since Roman times, surviving Gelasius' attempt to stamp it out, right up to the 20th Century - there being evidence of it in medieval Britain, in 16th and 17th Century Britain, and right up to the early 1900s in certain areas. This will become obvious to you when you continue reading.
Written Proof of the Celebration of Valentine's Day and of St. Valentine as Patron of Lovers down the Years
Much remains to prove that St. Valentine's Day was celebrated in the past as a feast of lovers, a day when birds start mating with all the associated traditions of courting in humans:
In 14th Century England, Geoffrey Chaucer mentioned St. Valentine's Day in a poem written in honour of the engagement of Richard II (13 at the time) to Anne of Bohemia (aged 14). According to some, in his poem, The Parlament of Fowls, Chaucer associated the occasion with the feast day, linking the mating of birds, the Royal engagement, romance and St. Valentine's Day together:For this was seynt Volantyny's Day whan
Euery bryd comyth there to chese his mate.
Detractors of the importance of St. Valentine and Lupercalia, as points of origin of a day dedicated to lovers, maintain that Chaucer was the first person to link the notion of romance and courtly love to St. Valenine's Day. Somehow, I think not.
The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orléans to his "valentined" wife. Je suis deija d'amour tanne,
Ma tres doulce Valentinee.
Imprisoned in the Tower of London when he wrote this, in 1415, after being captured by the English in the Battle of Agincourt, it was one of thousands of poems he wrote to his wife. Sixty of these can be seen in the British Museum, which probably means his wife never received them!
Wilt thou be mine? dear love, reply
Sweetly consent, or else deny;
Whisper softly, none shall know,
Wilt thou be mine, love? aye or no?
(from Duke Charles of Orléans, Tower of London, England, 1415 A.D.)
Even the common people wrote notes to their Valentines. In 1477, Margery Brews sent a letter to her beloved, John Paston of Norfolk, calling him my right worshipful and well-belovyd Volantyn. This is the first recorded valentine in letter form. Henry VIII of England declared St. Valentine's Day an official holiday in 1537, and on Valentine's Day 1565, Mary Queen of Scots met Henry Stuart (Lord Darnsley) for the first time, where he presented her with a miniature of himself and proposed marriage. It seems that they liked what they saw of each other, as they tied the knot five months later and had one son - the future James VI of Scotland, later James I of England. William Shakespeare's Ophelia also talks ruefully of Valentine's Day in Hamlet (1600-1601), saying, "Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day." Robert Herrick of England wrote in 1648: Choose me your Valentine, Next let us marry. On Valentine's Day, in 1667, Samuel Pepys described in his famous Diary a surprise valentine he had received from his wife. It was handwritten, cut out with scissors, and had a love message inscribed on it in gold lettering against a soft blue pastel paper in a young child's script. This was probably an early example of the fore-runners of today's cards.Valentine Cards
Down the years, Valentine's Day essentially became a day for sending messages of love to the apple of one's eye. Whether the first such message was sent by Valentine himself to his new friend, the jailor's daughter, we will never know, but the sending of messages of love certainly did take on after that.
The very first evidence of a hand-written piece specifically mentioning the word "valentine" within, seems to be that rondeau written by the afore-mentioned Duke of Orléans, to his wife, in 1415. This can now be seen when visiting the British Museum, so keep your eyes open if you're ever there! At the time it is probable that few home-made letters or cards were fashioned and sent to one's love to celebrate the big day - one had to be well off enough to afford the parchment and literate enough to write the message in the first place, and so examples are very scarce. As parchment/ paper and an education (however basic) became more commonplace, so did written valentines, and eventually cards.
Written valentines therefore took hold mainly in the 17th century, and the first printed Valentine's Day message may have been the title page of a book of verses, published in 1669, named The Valentine Writer. By the 18th Century, Valentine messages were becoming popular in both France and Germany. The Germans and Prussians had begun making fancy white lace borders and adding red hearts to be cut out and pasted onto the Valentine "card". In the late 1700s, Cupid had somehow begun to appear (with his peevish grin and bow and arrow close at hand) on Valentine love letters and verses in England. It wasn't too very long after this that flowers, yet more hearts, love birds, smiling couples and more cupids were added. During the last quarter of the 18th Century, the Germans contributed their Freundeschaftskarten, which were handmade friendship or lover's cards closely resembling the forthcoming valentines of the 19th Century. Germans who were settling in the United States at this time introduced the cards to the US and they found themselves being ultimately spread to other parts of that country.
The first Valentine cards as we know them were, therefore, home-made and eventually reached their most elaborate state by the Victorian era, with lace, velvet and satin ribbons as adornments. They had surely already taken off by the late 1700s and early 1800s and by 1840 they were being produced in the US by Esther A. Howland of Worchester, Massachusetts. Howland is known as the "Mother of Valentine" in the US, and she made elaborate creations out of lace paper, ribbons and colourful pictures. She seems to have gotten her idea for making these cards after she received a Valentine card from someone in England, and she was soon producing them commercially and on a large scale (getting all the help she could get from her father who owned a large book store and stationery), so that they became extremely popular and wide-spread in the US.
Back in the UK, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote about the sending of Valentine's cards on in her Mr Harrison's Confessions (I851) - evidence that card-sending had now taken on very well. The introduction of the Penny Postage in the 1840s had made it even easier to send messages and cards in the UK, making the latter even more popular. Commercially-produced, British, Victorian cards were as elaborate as those produced by Howland, and made of the best possible materials. Some cards had tricks and hidden panels were secret message could be written, but still escape the prying eyes of strict, Victorian fathers. Later on, and very similarly to what we have today, love messages in verse were printed on the insides of the cards.
Gifts....and the Rest of the Paraphenalia
There is evidence that already, in Saxon England, young men gave their chosen lasses a gift of a pair of gloves on Valentine's day, gloves (at the time) signifying authority. If the custom of giving gifts on Valentine's Day lingered on, totally uninterrupted, is not certainly known but is very probable.
During chivalrous, medieval England men wrote the name of the lady whose name he had picked (during the traditional picking from the urn dating back to Roman times) on his sleeve - this is from where the old adage wearing one's heart on one's sleeve comes. The man then promised to offer protection and give assistance throughout the year. The lady was thereby called the man's valentine, and they exchanged love tokens throughout the year.
By the 17th century gift-giving on the occasion of Valentine's day was well and truly in force, with the aristocracy playing the usual "drawing of names" game (probably during balls), and the ladies expecting expensive presents from the lucky man. The 17th century also saw the introduction of flowers as gifts on Valentines day, and Henry IV of France is thought to be responsible. He gave a large ball for his daughter one February 14th, at which party all ladies received a bouquet of flowers from a young man which she herself chose from a line-up of eligible bachelors.
While chocolates are very popular as St. Valentine's Day gifts nowadays, before the commercial production of chocolates, special sweets were prepared for the occasion. In Peterborough (Northamptonshire) sweet plum buns called Valentine's Buns were made. It was special gingerbread sweets which were given as a gift in Uppingham, a small market-town in the East Midlands and in Rutland, buns shaped like weaver's shuttles, called Plum Shuttles, were, and are still made, every 14th of February.
Lovers were not the only ones to receive gifts on Valentine's Eve in Norfolk! That's because in Norfolk they had a special, romantic, tradition that was unique to the country - that of Jack Valentine. It is said that in Victorian times Valentine's Eve was as important as Christmas in Norfolk, with lavish presents exchanged anonymously between lovers, and children being given presents by their parents. As far as presents for children were concerned, this was still very common in the 1960s. Jack Valentine (or Mother Valentine in instances) would knock on the door and leave presents on the door-step to be collected by the expectant child. This tradition is still kept today.
St. Valentine's Today
Today, the traditions tied to St. Valentine's Day remain as popular as ever, although many complain that things have become over-commercialized. In any case, it remains a special day with parties organised (some including the traditional names being picked out of a bag and name-matching) as well as romantic dinners, and cards and gifts exchanged.....all in the of love.
The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that 25% of all cards sent out every year are, in fact, Valentine cards. They estimate that this amounts to about a billion Valentine cards being sent World-wide. Women are said to purchase 85% of these cards.
Flowers and chocolates remain the most popular gifts-to-give on St. Valentine's Day, although (in the UK) some people still do make, and give, the traditional Valentine sweets based on a plum filling.
Some people go out of their way to make Valentine's Day even more special by coming up with ever more original (sometimes bizarre) ideas. Since 1994, for example, couples have been married on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building to celebrate the occasion. In 2003, the Galeries Lafayette in Paris invited those seeking instant love to a marathon dating session on February 13th, featuring a seven-minute tete-a-tete each, with seven potential partners.... and in 2002 two male elephants were married to six female elephants during a ceremony held on Valentine's Day in the ancient, Thai capital of Ayutthaya.
In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church revised its Calendar of Saints and the feast day of St. Valentine was removed from the Roman Calendar and relegated to local calendars only. The reason for this was that, besides Valentine's name and the fact that he was martyred and buried on the Via Flaminia, nothing much was known about the saint. His feast, however, is still formally celebrated in Balzan, Malta (where holy relics of the Saint are claimed to be kept, besides those in Rome and Ireland), and by Traditionalist Catholics who follow the pre-Vatican II calendar.
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