Martyrs, pagan rituals and Catholic popes - not the images typically associated with the traditional hearts and cupids of Valentine's Day. In truth, the holiday most associated with love is a story of oppression and murder.
The pagan festival of Lupercalia was the precursor to what is now known as Valentine's Day. Celebrated by the Romans on Feb. 15, Lupercalia called for the sacrifice of goats and dogs - two animals noted for their strong sexual instinct -to appease the god of fertility, Faunus.
Two Roman youths of noble blood, the "Luperci," were taken to the site of the sacrifice and anointed with the blood of the animals. The blood was then wiped clean with wool dipped in milk, symbolic of the feral being disciplined by nurturing. Soon after, the Luperci drank alcohol and ran around the city, whipping young women with the hides of sacrificed animals in the hopes they would more fertile.
By A.D. 496, Lupercalia had evolved into a festival more of love than fertility. Young men would draw the names of women who would be their sexual companion for a year. Lupercalia had become a "right of passage" for young men.
Years later, the Christian Pope Gelasius took it upon himself to revise the festival's traditions, declaring it was not the celebration of love that God disapproved of, but rather the pagan elements involved. Gelasius was in need of a new, more Christian event to celebrate love, one that promoted the ideals of the faith as well as a mode of conduct. He found his reason in the martyr, Saint Valentine.
In A.D. 269, a time when Christians were persecuted and Roman Emperor Claudius the Goth had outlawed marriage, under the assumption that unmarried men performed better in battle, Valentine is said to have been a bishop. Imprisoned for secretly aiding young couples in marrying, as well as refusing to worship the pagan gods, Valentine allegedly fell in love with the jailor's daughter who frequently came to visit him.
Valentine was murdered on Feb. 14, leaving behind a letter to his love containing the words, "Remember your Valentine, I love you." Some stories say he was beheaded, others say he was clubbed or stoned to death. Years later, the Catholic Church recognized him as a saint.
Pope Gelasius moved his revised festival to Feb. 14 and made Valentine the patron saint of love. Initially, the festival was not as popular as its more passionate predecessor, but over the centuries it has grown and evolved in its own right to what we know today.
Cupid, one of the most common Valentine's Day images, evolved out of Roman mythology. Cupid was the son of the goddess of love, Aphrodite, and true to today's legend, caused men and women to fall in love with an arrow from his bow.
According to the legend, Aphrodite orders her son to make Psyche, the most beautiful woman in the world, fall in love with a worthless man, but Cupid instead falls in love with Psyche himself. After an initially tumultuous marriage, Psyche is granted immortality for the depth of her love of Cupid, and the two have a daughter, Voluptas.
Although the holiday's current incarnation as a Hallmark tradition find lovers buying presents (or cursing their lack of romantic success), millions celebrate, unwittingly, perhaps, the power of St. Valentine's love letter many years ago.
Photo: Breadchastick / Wikimedia Commons
