Keep the Saint in St. Valentine’s Day. Otherwise, it might become gloriously debauched.
There are many holidays that we theorize were pasted over with celebrations of saints. Some of the arguments feel a little flimsy. Others? A bit more convincing. But was it a church conspiracy, or do we owe this coverup to Geoffrey Motherfuckin’ Chaucer?
Lupercalia, held in Rome on February 13-15th, was a pagan celebration of blood, violence and sex. As best we can tell, it dates back to around the 8th century BCE. It was first called “Februa,” which means purifications or purgings (as well as February and Juna Februalis, the patron deity of the month); the point of the festival was to drive out evil spirits and infertility. Lupercalia probably comes from an ancient Greek wolf festival, and the Lupercal, the cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a great she-wolf. Celebrations were confined to that cave, the Palatine Hill and the Forum, which in many ways made Lupercalia a celebration of the founding of Rome.
ROMAN MYTH TIME: The long-short version goes that twin boys Romulus and Remus were nephews of King Amulius. The king ordered the boys to be thrown in the Tiber River to drown as punishment for their mother’s broken vow of celibacy and, more likely, conception of boys that might be a threat to his reign – she was a vestal virgin and daughter of the former king who had been displaced by Amulius. Some legends say that the god Mars “visited” Rhea in a grove dedicated to him, making them half-gods. The god Tiberinus saved them and settled them at the foot of a fig tree – which many see as symbolizing breastfeeding from the shape of the fruit and the tree’s milky sap. In the Lupercal, the twins were suckled by a she-wolf until the boys could be adopted. They helped their grandfather regain the throne. They came to settle Rome and couldn’t agree on a site; they decided to let the gods settle it through augury via birds – this will be important later, okay? Bear with me.
Celebrations of Lupercalia included blood sacrifices, smearing lots of stuff with said blood, cakes prepared by the vestal virgins, running about nude, for-funsies whippings (sometimes with strips of the sacrificed goats’ hides) and the eating of figs. In a small precursor to key parties, men would draw women’s names randomly from a jar and party with her for the duration of the festival; many of these couples stayed together, no doubt because some resulted in bebes.
Despite a ban on all non-Christian cults and festival in 391, Lupercalia managed to hang on, though the nudity and full-on whipping was kinda frowned upon. Pope Gelasius I declared that only “vile rabble” celebrated the festival and tried to have it banned, but the Roman Senate was like. Um, that won’t go over. (Gelasius responded, “If you assert that this rite has salutary force, celebrate it yourselves in the ancestral fashion; run nude yourselves that you may properly carry out the mockery.” And I bet the Senators were like. LOL ok.) At any rate, it became less and less acceptable to celebrate until it sort of faded into obscurity. Meanwhile…
Saint Valentine is considered the patron saint of fiancés, happy marriages, love and ~courtly love~. (Also epilepsy, fainting, plague and mental illness.) But like so many saints who were kinda promoted to higher import than their documented acts, it’s not super clear what this dude was up to – indeed, there were numerous Christian martyrs called Valentine. His hagiography suggests that he was sent to Rome to try and convert Claudius II, who liked him until all that Jesus talk started. Claudius eventually had him beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14, 269.
An apocryphal story goes that before his execution, he wrote a note that he signed, “from your Valentine.” Did it happen? Almost certainly not, but golly isn’t that lovely? Even the story of his execution is shaky – historians note that it seems to be an amalgamation of a few stories from the time. At any rate, the Feast of Saint Valentine was established on February 14th in 469. His iconography includes roses, birds and beheadings. That’s hot.
In the Middle Ages, it was believed that birds coupled up in mid-February. Geoffrey Chaucer put forth the Parlement of Foules (ca. 1381-1383), a ~700-line visio poem about a whole lotta birds (in honor of the engagement of fifteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia to Richard II). In the text, Chaucer referenced Valentine’s Day as a long-standing tradition and day celebrating lovers; he was one of the first to connect Valentine’s Day and romance (and birds.) Some scholars even believe he wrote it to be finished on Valentine’s Day.
“You are all well aware how, on Saint Valentine’s Day, by my command, you all come here to choose your mates, through the delightful urge that I have instilled in you, and then you quickly depart again. But we must not depart from tradition.” - Translation by Richard Scott-Robinson
But wait again. Was he referring to Saint Valentine of Genoa, whose feast day would fall one day after the treaty providing the marriage that the whole thing was written for? Or was he actually for sure thinking about February? Other authors around that time wrote about birds mating in February, so it seems like if it was about May, then maybe Chaucer’s work would contain fewer birds – not no birds, just fewer.
Does it even matter? Subsequent works – notably by Charles d’Orleans, Shakespeare and John Donne – continued the connection between Saint Valentine, romance, birds and roses. And the connection to blood remains; a beheading, thumping red hearts, scattered rose petals, Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang.