Every year on February 14 we invoke the patron saint of romance and send cards and gifts to those who have caught our romantic eye. Sometimes the gifts we send and receive are unsigned, the pleasure of receiving heightened by the mystery of the valentine. Which is fitting – for who is certain of the real St Valentine?

While the holiday itself has its roots in Christian and Roman traditions that have slowly changed and adapted over the years, the myths around St Valentine himself are many and all unconfirmed.

Currently several St Valentines are recognized by the Catholic Church – all of whom were martyred. Some have feast days to commemorate their martyrdom, but the St Valentine after whom the holiday is named does not. That is because the Catholic Church decided to only honour saints proven by historical evidence to have upheld the faith; all our saint of lovers can lay claim to is legends.

The official story from the Catholic Church is that Valentine was a priest who assisted Christians persecuted by Emperor Claudius II. Unfortunately he was caught, and when he refused to renounce his faith, was beaten, stoned and eventually beheaded, on February 14.

A more romantic legend that expands on this very basic history fits well with his modern image: Valentine was a Christian priest who defied the emperor of Rome by marrying Christian couples in secret. At the time, Christian ceremonies, or even helping Christians, was illegal and punishable by death. The priest was caught and taken to the emperor, who apparently took a liking to him. But Valentine made the mistake of trying to convert the emperor to Christianity, and was promptly ordered beaten and stoned. When that didn’t kill him, he was executed.

An alternative to this story does not concern Christianity at all – Valentine was a priest, and he did defy the emperor’s orders but they were orders concerning his soldiers. Apparently the emperor thought that young men made better soldiers if they were unmarried and had no families of their own so he made it illegal for them to marry. Valentine saw this as an injustice and helped young lovers marry in secret; when he was found out, he was killed.

Other legends speak of the time of Valentine’s incarceration while awaiting execution. A young woman – who sometimes appears in the story as the jailor’s daughter – apparently visited Valentine quite regularly and they fell in love. Supposedly before he died, he wrote her a final note, signing it ‘from your Valentine’ – a phrase still used to this day. In other versions of the same story, the girl was blind and Valentine, in a miracle of love, caused her to regain her sight.

The timing of Valentine’s Day, as with many other Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, may have more to do with Christian efforts to convert pagan festivals and stamp out heathen behaviour than actual events occurring on the day. The Roman Lupercalia was a festival of fertility that fell in the middle of February. Men of noble birth would run naked in the streets whipping women and farmers’ crops with strips of hide from a goat sacrificed earlier in the day. Women would deliberately get in their way to be struck because they believed it would give them an easy labour if pregnant, or increase their chances of getting pregnant
if not.

In another practice associated with the festival, unmarried women of the city would place their names in a large urn. The city’s bachelors would then each pick out a name from the urn in a lottery for their companion for the year, with the hope that these pairings would end in marriage. This practice, as well as the festival of Lupercalia, were thought to be very un-Christian-like, and were eventually made illegal. Instead Pope Gelasius dedicated February 14 to Valentine to celebrate his death in the year 498 BCE.

It seems likely though that the actual association of February 14 with love and romantic pairings could be credited to Chaucer, the great English medieval writer and author of The Canterbury Tales. Apparently in celebration of the engagement of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer composed a poem about birds meeting to mate on Valentine’s Day. It’s likely he chose the month of February because it is roughly around the beginning of spring, and birds would have come together after wintering apart.

Writing notes or poems to loved ones on the day also has a long history; nor is it exclusive to the myth of St Valentine. The oldest existing valentine belonged to the wife of Charles, the Duke of Orleans, who wrote her a poem while imprisoned in the Tower of London after the Battle of Agincourt. It is on display today in the British Museum.

The practice of sending valentines came into full swing at the end of the 17th century in England, and the custom was soon taken over to the United States. Up until the end of the 18th century valentines were still hand-made and hand-written, but with the invention of the printing press, cards began to be mass-produced in the England. This practice was adopted in the US about 40 years later and Hallmark and American Greetings can happily thank Esther A. Howland for being the first person to mass-produce valentines and sell them to the public in 1840. It is now estimated that 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent annually on Valentine’s Day; it’s the second largest card-giving holiday after Christmas.

Although St Valentine has kept pace with us through the centuries from mythical beginnings to modern commercialism, we can’t exactly know who he was or even what he is. He will always be elusive and mysterious – just like the feelings we evoke when we sign with a ? the card accompanying the roses to our valentine.