According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there are three saints named Valentinus under the date of the day of lovers, Valentine’s Day. Two different versions of the story of, I suppose, the same martyr (all three were, though) are known. One legend reports that Valentinus kept marrying soldiers after the Emperor Claudius made it illegal because he thought single men made better soldiers than the married ones (is it true? I thought having something to fight for made better soldiers). The other, instead, is about marrying Christians during the persecutions. There is a third, who to me looks like a revised version of the one of Eloisa and Abelard, about Valentinus in prison for helping Christians escape prison, who fell in love with a young girl attending to him during the period and sent her letters while he was waiting for death punishment.
The date of Valentine’s Day is, of course, as decided in theory than Christmas. It was a common thought during the Middle Ages that birds paired halfway through February, so around the day we know as Valentine’s Day. There is no specific link between this and the martyrologies. There is no reported link between this date and some pagan rites for fertility (the Lupercalia) which were held during the ides of February either. The proofs of Valentine’s Day as a day for romance dates back to the Middle Ages.
It makes me think, maybe just with my romantic mind mistaking it all, of young lovers who were not given the possibility to marry each other due to the interests of the families. It makes me think of sonnets about those angel-like women, or men in a greater secret than the opposed love.
There is something about the origins of Valentine’s Day, and the romantic portrait of the martyr, who could have even been a believable hero in a Lord Byron’s poem, that makes me feel Valentine’s Day as we know it absolutely annoying.
I have received promotions for holidays or any other kind of products for weeks now, and the shops’ windows have been full of hearts since they stopped being full of Christmas’ decorations.
The motto is “show how much you love your partner.” I am not sure I would be really showing love to my partner, or I would be doing it more than when I bought someone a box of chocolates far from Valentine’s Day because I knew he liked it, and I would make him happy.
Anyway, the two legends about the Valentinus who married people who could not be married, were they soldiers or Christians, make me hope for a return to the origins. There are many categories in our societies that are still unable to get married, and many places in which people yet cannot marry for love. Maybe we should remind ourselves of this before we spend money to show love to someone on Valentine’s Day.
Posted by Alessia Cesana
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 21:25 and is filed under DailyNews-Humanities, Humanities.
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