“Thread: History of Valentines Day”

Ancient historical sources have claimed the existence of several saints by the name of St.Valentines who died on Feb 14. Among them, two were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus in 269-270 A.D.
#valentinesday2021

[1]

It was the time when the Christian persecution was common. Another legendary account states that under the rule of Claudius II, Rome was involved in the bloody campaigns, therefore, to maintain a strong army, Claudius II banned all marriages and engagements in Rome.

[2]
The reason of forbidding marriages was forced by the reluctance of people to join military because of their strong attachment to their wives. But St. Valentine defied the orders of the Emperor Claudius II Gothicus and married couples secretly to spare the husbands from war.

[3]
A few claims have reported that St.Valentine endorsed illegal relationships which could end up into a marriage. When it was discovered by the emperor, St. Valentine was arrested and condemned to have his head cut off.

[4]
An order of Belgian monks spent almost three centuries to explore the lives of saints by the name of St.Valentines from archives around the world. Bollandists suggested, that there weren’t actually two decapitated Valentines, but the two different versions of one saint’s...

[5]
..legend appeared in both Rome and Terni. As per another claim, Valentine’s Day has its origins in the Roman festival of Lupercalia which was celebrated on the ides of February i.e the 15th Feb. It was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture

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Lupercalia was also dedicated to Romulus and Remus; the founders of Rome. This festival was purportedly denounced by Pope Gelasius in 496 A.D.

But no evidence exists whether Pope replaced Lupercalia with the more sedate cult of the St. Valentine or any other celebration.

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Although the Roman Catholic Church continues to recognize St. Valentine as a saint of the church, he was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 for the following reason: "Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since...

[8]
apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14.".

It is claimed that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to ‘Christianize’...

[9]
the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Medieval legends have given accounts of St. Valentine performing Christian marriage rituals; passing notes between Christian lovers jailed by Claudius Gothicus and tales of St.Valentine romantically involved with the blind girl he cured.

[10]
Valentine’s Day was not celebrated as a day of romance until about 14th century when the notions of courtly love surfaced. Jack B.Oruch, a professor at the University of Kansas, argues that the poet Geoffrey Chaucer was the first person to link Valentine’s Day to romance.

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This indicates that the love connection probably appeared more than a thousand years after the death of St. Valentine, when Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales” had decreed the February feast of St. Valentinus to the mating of birds seven hundred years after..

[12]
..the celebration of Lupercalia was believed to have ceased. Chaucer, in his “Parlement of Foules” wrote:

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day. Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make”.

[13]
Even Shakespeare’s lovestruck Ophelia spoke of herself as Hamlet’s Valentine. The first Valentine's Day card dates back to 1415 when the Duke of Orleans sent a card to his wife when he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. In the US, Valentine's Day cards became popular...

[14]
.. during the Revolutionary War. In the years followed, the alleged love fiction surrounding February 14th stayed elusive; however, industrialization and capitalism over commercialized the idea of love by associating it with a day whose historical origins remained precarious.
Bibliography:

1. https://t.co/LSUF1lgoCl

2. https://t.co/nt43H70mYv

3. https://t.co/laNAooLIxQ.
https://t.co/k7ax7Pl5Kg

4. https://t.co/5Bs9QWHNDG

5. https://t.co/RODX0tc65u

6. https://t.co/ftP8uJirXy

7. https://t.co/XEjUgdtISG

8. https://t.co/cMz0qADsq0

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