Saint Valentine

There is a great mystery surrounding Saint Valentine, his deeds, his life and his martyrdom. His date of birth and place of birth, for instance, are not known and his name is not mentioned in any of the earliest lists of Roman martyrs that had been compiled by a chronographer in 354. However, Saint Valentine is also known as Velentinus and has been recognized in later years as one of several martyred saints of ancient Rome.

The feast of Saint Valentine was first announced by Pope Gelasius I in 496 and has been celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on the fourteenth of February until 1969 when the church decided to drop it from its calendar due to the lack of concrete information, much confusion and contradictory legends. Actually, before 1969 the Catholic Church recognized a sum total of eleven Valentine’s Days besides the fourteenth of February: the seventh of January; the second of May; the sixteenth of July; the thirty-first of August, the second of September, the twenty-fifth of October; the first, third, eleventh and thirteenth of November; and the sixteenth of December.

Some local churches within the Catholic Church and those throughout the western world who practice the traditional pre-Vatican II Catholicism still celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day on the fourteenth of February. It is also interesting to note that the celebrations in the church in Rome that had been dedicated to Saint Valentine before the creation of the Church’s new calendar, included, among other customary edicts, an extravagant display of a skull surrounded by roses that was believed to be Saint Valentine’s.

The Roman Catholic Church now believes that St. Valentine’s Day which is still widely and avidly celebrated by lovers on February fourteenth throughout the western hemisphere possibly commemorates one of three martyred men who were all named Valentinus and who all lived at the end of the third century during the reign of Emperor Caudius II. The Eastern Orthodox Church still celebrates the same feast on the last day of July but also has a set of its own dates to celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day.

It is highly likely that the celebration of Saint Valentine was created by the Roman Catholic Church in an effort to overshadow Lupercalia, a pagan holiday that continued to be celebrated on the fifteenth of February in fifth-century Rome. Many of the currently prevalent legends and characteristics that are attributed to Saint Valentine were invented in England during the fourteenth century when the celebration of the fourteenth of February first became connected with romantic love.

Saint Valentine is described as the bishop of Terni (a town north of Rome) in French manuscripts of the fourteenth century. He is said to have supervised the erection of his own basilica at Terni but there is no mention that he was a patron of lovers.

Some relics were exhumed from the catacombs of Saint Hippolytus in 1836 and were correctly or otherwise identified with Saint Valentine. Consequently, his remains were placed in a gilded casket and transferred to the Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland. Huge local and foreign crowds gather at this church on Valentine’s Day, when the casket is carried to the high alter for a special Mass devoted to young lovers. There are additional allegations that Saint Valentine’s remains lie in Roquemaure in France, Stephansdom in Austria, Blessed St. John Duns Scotus in Scotland and the Birmingham Oratory in England.

Whatever is the true story about Saint Valentine, I, personally, am glad to have an excuse to celebrate a holiday for lovers. Aren’t you?

Spread The Love ;-)