5 Facts about Valentine's Day

Every year for all the romantics out there, February the 14th is the day to celebrate and show the love we have for someone special. 

Restaurants are booked up in advance (in the days before Covid), florists are taking more orders than normal and special personalised gifts and messages of love are winging their way to cherished ones around the world, but why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day and what does it mean?

 

It’s thought the St Valentine who inspired the celebration day could have been in fact, two different men.

St. Valentine is known to be a real person who died around A.D. 270. However, his true identity was questioned as early as A.D. 496 by Pope Gelasius I, who referred to the martyr and his acts as “being known only to God.” 

One account from the 1400s describes Valentine as a temple priest who was beheaded near Rome by the emperor Claudius II for helping Christian couples wed. A different account claims Valentine was the Bishop of Terni, also martyred by Claudius II on the outskirts of Rome.

 

There’s approximately 12 St.Valentine’s and a Pope.

The official Roman Catholic roster of saints shows about a dozen who were named Valentine or some variation thereof. 

The most recently beatified Valentine is St. Valentine Berrio-Ochoa, a Spaniard of the Dominican order who traveled to Vietnam, where he served as bishop until his beheading in 1861.

The saint we celebrate on Valentine’s Day is known officially as St. Valentine of Rome, i order to differentiate him from the dozen or so other Valentines on the list. Because “Valentinus”—from the Latin word for worthy, strong or powerful—was a popular moniker between the second and eighth centuries A.D., several martyrs over the centuries have carried this name.

There was even a Pope Valentine, though little is known about him except that he served a mere 40 days around A.D. 827.

You can celebrate Valentine’s Day several times a year.

Because of the abundance of St. Valentines on the Roman Catholic roster, you can choose to celebrate the saint multiple times each year. Besides February 14, you might decide to celebrate St. Valentine of Viterbo on November 3. Or maybe you want to get a jump on the traditional Valentine celebration by feting St. Valentine of Raetia on January 7.

Women might choose to honour the only female St. Valentine (Valentina), a virgin martyred in Palestine on July 25, A.D. 308. The Eastern Orthodox Church officially celebrates St. Valentine twice, once as an elder of the church on July 6 and once as a martyr on July 30.

 

English poet Geoffrey Chaucer may have invented Valentine’s Day.

The medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer often took liberties with history, placing his poetic characters into fictitious historical contexts that he represented as real. No record exists of romantic celebrations on Valentine’s Day prior to a poem Chaucer wrote around 1375. In his work “Parliament of Foules,” he links a tradition of courtly love with the celebration of St. Valentine’s feast day–an association that didn’t exist until after his poem received widespread attention.

 The poem refers to February 14 as the day birds (and humans) come together to find a mate. When Chaucer wrote, “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate,” he may have invented the holiday we know today

 

Valentine is the patron saint of beekeepers and epilepsy.

Saints are certainly expected to keep busy in the afterlife. Their holy duties include interceding in earthly affairs and entertaining petitions from living souls. In this respect, St. Valentine has wide-ranging spiritual responsibilities. People call on him to watch over the lives of lovers, of course, but also for interventions regarding beekeeping and epilepsy, as well as the plague, fainting and traveling.

As you might expect, he’s also the patron saint of engaged couples and happy marriages.

 

 

With Love,