[post 002] St. Valentine's Day

It's been my tradition to mark the occasion of valentines day with some kind of cartoonish piece that depicts violence against a hapless, heart shaped personification of the day itself. In keeping with the new spirit of this blog, I thought I'd share some history of this ancient observation of romantic love with you instead!

Via Wikipedia

"Saint Valentine (in Latin, Valentinus) is the name of several martyred saints of ancient Rome. Of the Saint Valentine whose feast is on February 14, nothing is known except his name and that he was buried at the Via Flaminia north of Rome on February 14"

Oh. Uh. Hmm. Well...

"The feast of St. Valentine was first established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, who included Valentine among those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." As Gelasius implied, nothing was known, even then, about the lives of any of these martyrs."

I see. Surely, then...

The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in Parlement of Foules (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer:^[5]

For this was on seynt Volantynys day

Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese [choose] his make [mate].

This poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia^[6]. A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381.^[7] (When they were married eight months later, he was 13 or 14. She was 14.)"

Woah, woah woah, ok. Ok. Let's... lets not give up just yet.
Ok, lets see, uh french courts, no, imprisoned in the tower of london, ok ok, referenced by Ophelia in Hamlet, no definitely not, Removed from Roman Catholic calendar in 1969, damn this isn't going well. Umm... Ah! Here we go:


"In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts... In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry."

There! I knew if we dug long enough we'd find the long standing traditional and ancient roots of this wonderful celebration!

[-ekundayo]