Pamela Haag: Valentine's Day: Its Gory, Unromantic Secret History

The origin of Valentine's Day has nothing to do with love and everything to do with "torturous martyrdom." On second thought, perhaps the origin of Valentine's Day has a great deal to do with love*

Originally, the feast day of St. Valentine honored two third century martyrs by the name of Valentine who were elevated to sainthood in the early middle ages. Both Valentines -- one the Bishop of Terni and the other a priest in Rome -- were allegedly decapitated by their persecutors on February 14.

Incidentally, St. Valentine (as the two Valentines seem to have merged into one figure by the 9th century) is the patron saint of epileptics, not lovers.

Medieval miracle plays based on the Bishop of Terni Valentine show him brutally beaten, bloodied, and decapitated before angels transport him to heaven. It really puts you in a mood for love.

According to author Leigh E. Schmidt, several locales in Europe claimed Terni's relics, as they were widely dispersed. Several different shrines claimed possession of his skull.

There was no link between St. Valentine's Day and love until the 14th century. At that time, some scholars claim that Chaucer associated Valentine's Day with lovers by describing it as the day on which birds select their mates.

More plausibly, writes Elizabeth White Nelson, the tradition of expressing love on Valentine's Day comes from the Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility rite held on February 15. Typically, the medieval church would try to combine saints' feast days with pagan festivals, to boost Church loyalty and participation.

Whatever the reasons, by the 1500s the link between Valentine's Day, courtship, and love was established. The religious meanings of the day faded; its amorous meanings grew.

Rituals emerged in Europe in the 1600s and 1700s to divine future spouses on Valentine's Day. Some young people went to churchyards at midnight to await an omen, but drawing lots was the most common practice of divination. Clergyman Henry Bourne explained in 1725,

It is a ceremony, ... to draw Lots, which they term Valentines... The names of a select number of one Sex, are by an equal Number of the other put into some Vessel; and, after that, every one draws a Name, which for the present is called their Valentine, and is also look'd upon as good Omen of their Man and Wife afterwards.

The "drawing lots" ceremony could get ugly, and vicious. In France this celebration of the lottery of love became fractious. In France, explains Elizabeth White Nelson, once the valentines had been chosen, the woman prepared a meal for the man, and they attended a public dance. If the man was displeased, he would leave her, and she would remain in seclusion for eight days.

But, at the end of this time, "all the women who had been spurned gathered in the town square and burned their valentines in effigy."

This carnival of romantic revenge often escalated into riots, such that in 1776 the French parliament outlawed the ritual, and it had practically disappeared by ...read more
Source: Weird News Blog