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In This Blog Post, We Will Talk About Why We Celebrate Valentine’s Day Today And How It Relates To Saint Valentine. Please note: This Article Is Very Long.
Rickard’s Review Will Be Published In A Couple Of Hours Since He Is Still Finishing It. On Our Part, We Have Been Scouring The Net To Find Some Facts About Saint Valentine And This Is What We Found Out.
Pagan Or Christian Origin Of Saint Valentine’s Day?
The first question we have to ask ourselves is whether the celebration of February the 14th each year as the most romantic day of the year has Christian or pagan roots.
Facts That Favors Christian Roots
There are two main reasons for those that would advocate that Saint Valentine’s Day have Christian roots.
The first one is that the man who later became known as Saint Valentine would marry young lovers even though the Roman emperor has published a decree that banned marrying young men to women since he would like them to do military service than being married.
This tradition tells that Saint Valentine did continue to marry young people together and was killed when the Roman authorities found out about it. The emperor that should have made this decree were Claudius II (213 – 270 A.D.).
It is a tradition that stems from the hagiographic account (which in plain English means the account of a holy person’s life and death) of Saint Valentine of Rome.
This is a thing that actually complicates things about Saint Valentine. There is no one, but a lot of different Valentinus or Valentines celebrated on this very day. The tradition has been harmonized between the different person’s hagiographies without any discrepancies.
The second tradition that favours Christian roots tells that Valentine was protesting against Roman prisons’ harsh conditions where Christians used to be tortured and beaten in them when they were thrown in jail because of their faith.
There is also a third tradition that tells that we celebrate Saint Valentine’s day in mid-February because it was when the commemoration of the death of Saint Valentine was celebrated.
The Catholic Church started early to celebrate the festive day of Saint Valentinus (which in plain English will be Valentine) on February the 14th, which supports the Christian roots’ theory. It still is celebrated to this day and in the Lutheran Church and the Anglican Churches.
It should be noted that after the Second Vatican Council it has been stated from the Catholic Church that the festive day of Saint Valentine should not be celebrated on this day but on another day which each country has to decide for themselves.
The Orthodox Church, however, celebrate the festive day of Saint Valentine on the 7th of July they celebrate the presbyter (priest, the Greek word is actually where the English word priest originates from) suffered martyrdom as well as on the 30th of July when they celebrate the Bishop of Interamna that also were named Valentine.
Facts That Favors Pagan Roots
For those that favour pagan roots for Saint Valentine’s day use to point out that there were a Roman festival called Lupercalia where they sacrificed a goat and a dog, preferably a female dog (Latin: Lupa) since it was a reenactment of the Roman founding myth about the twin brothers Romulus and Remus that were believed to had been taken care of by a female wolf.
It should also be noted that the festival of Lupercalia was celebrated on the 13th – 17th of February.
The goat’s skin was then cut into strips and gently slapped on women on the street and crop fields after they were dipped in blood. It was believed to bring fertility to the women as well as the crop fields.
This practice was deemed “un-Christian” in the 5th century by Pope Gelasius (492–496 A.D.) and consequently banned.
It needs to be stated that this was a local festival of Rome and not something that was celebrated widely throughout the Roman empire.
There is also a wide misconception that during Lupercalia, young men and women put their names in jars and were then paired together during this festival on the 14th of February. According to our research, there are no historical facts that support this claim.
The tradition of drawing names from jars wasn’t present until the Middle Ages, and then it had no connection with the pagan festival since all of them were long forgotten throughout Europe.
This is actually highly doubtful since there is no historical evidence for Saint Valentine’s Day’s connection as a lover’s day.
That is to say, not until the English author of the 14th Century Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his poem called “Valentine’s” and made the connection possible between this date and a special lover’s day.
Summary
Let us summarize the facts about Saint Valentine at the end of this article.
We can now conclude that Saint Valentine’s day is a Christian holiday from the very beginning and does not have anything to do with the pagan festival of Lupercalia which is a widespread misconception based upon traditions that originated in Europe during the Middle Ages.
The tradition of connecting Saint Valentine’s day as a special day for romance is a medieval idea from the English author’s Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem “Valentine’s”.
Next blog post
Our next blog post will be published later today.
It will be yet another review from our very own dating expert, Rickard.
Until then,
The Chi Rho Dating Group
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