A saint for lovers
by Mike Oettle
OF all the
saints on the calendar, there’s one you could hardly ignore in the 21st
century: Valentine. Between Christmas and Easter, 14 February is the one day
the gets commerce and especially advertising excited, egging the beleaguered
public on to spend on sentimental gifts from cards to jewellery – perhaps even
motorcars.
And unlike Christmas and Easter, which both retain something of a religious focus in the secular world, Valentine’s Day is seen purely as a day for romance in all its many variations – sometimes quite unseemly variations.
(Not
everyone is convinced about even Christmas being religious. A popular cartoon
from years ago shows a beatnik, noticing a poster proclaiming “Put Christ
back into Christmas”, saying: “Like, man, they’re trying to push religion
into everything these days.”)
So who was Valentine, and why is his day so important to everyone but the Church? – you won’t find him listed on modern Church calendars.
Well, to begin with, nobody’s even sure that there was a martyr called Valentinus (to give him his proper Roman name), and if you accept that there was, you find that he is honoured in two places . . . was he one man or two?
Assuming that there was a Roman priest called Valentinus behind the many and various legends that have grown up, he seems to have suffered death during the persecution ordered by the Emperor Claudius II around AD 269. Of course, this was in the time when the Church was still seen as a subversive organisation, and it was not until after Constantine (died 337) that records were openly kept and martyrs were officially commemorated. So Valentinus was not honoured until 350, when Pope St Julius built a basilica (a church in the form of a Roman magistrate’s court) in his honour. Beneath the site of the basilica a catacomb has been found containing the remains of one Valentinus.
But a
second Valentine tradition exists to confuse us.
The city of Interamna (today called Terni), 95 km from Rome, reportedly had a bishop called Valentinus who was martyred. But no grave in Terni has been identified as his, and perhaps the bishop of Interamna was executed in Rome. Possibly he is the same Valentinus commemorated in the Roman basilica. The evidence is uncertain.
But let us assume that the Valentinus executed in Rome – be he from Rome or from Interamna – was a priest, perhaps a bishop. He comes into prominence because of an edict of Claudius.
This
emperor, Marcus Aurelius Claudius, to give him his full name, also known as
Claudius Gothicus because of his defeat of the Goths in the Balkans in 269, had
become emperor in 268, the year before. He ruled but briefly, being killed in
battle in 270, and ruled only over Italy and the Balkans – other emperors had
been proclaimed in Greece and on the Rhine. The barbarian invasions were of
prime importance and he needed a great many men for his legions.
To draw more recruits, Claudius did what Shaka was to do again some 1 600 years later: he forbade young men to marry. Valentine, according to the most enduring of the stories about him, incurred the emperor’s wrath by marrying young
couples, and for this reason was executed, it is said, on 14 February.
Other
stories say that Valentinus was popular with children, and when he was imprisoned (for refusing to honour the gods) the children tossed loving notes into his cell window. Yet another story has it that Valentinus restored the sight of his jailer’s blind daughter.
Pope
Gelasius in 496 named 14 February as St Valentine’s Day.
In mediæval France, the Normans spoke of a lover or gallant as a galantine, and since they confused the sounds V, W and G, this to them was a form of “Valentine” – and so the saint was thought of as a patron of lovers.
The
earliest English references to St Valentine’s mention it as a time when every
bird chooses his mate. Fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The
Parliament of Fowls, which included the line: “For this was on St
Valentine’s Day,/ When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.” And Shakespeare refers to it in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Adding to the tradition of lovers’ messages on Valentine’s day is the tale of Charles, Duc d’Orléans, taken prisoner by the English at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and held in the Tower of London. On 14 February he sent his wife a rhymed love letter from his cell.
But there always seems to be a weed in any garden of roses, and this garden’s weed is a pagan Roman festival, Lupercalia. Held on 15 February, its object was protection from wolves. Young men would strike people with strips of animal hide, and women, believing that the blows would make them fertile, allowed themselves to be whipped. So since before the death of Valentinus the middle of February has also had a connotation of fertility.
So unfortunately the link between St Valentine’s Day and all its not quite Christian (and often distinctly unchristian) connotations is a strong one.
On the other hand, love – in all its many forms – is a
gift of God, and it is perhaps as well that romantic love can, through the
patronage of St Valentine, be seen from a Christian perspective.
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This article was originally published in Western Light, monthly magazine of All Saints’ Parish, Kabega Park, Port Elizabeth, in February 1994.
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