When looking for the origins of the romantic traditions of St. Valentine’s day, you may expect to find an account of some gesture or word linking the martyr to calls promoting married love. Maybe you would expect to read that prior to his death, he made the sign of a heart that today is associated with the day. I am sorry to disappoint you, no such connection exists.
Indeed, there is little known about the Saints Valentine.-there were two and some sources say three
Catholic martyrology maintains the execution of two devoted servants of God, named Valentius. One a priest and another a bishop, both in the mid to late 3rd Century and both at the hands of the Roman Emperor. Later the two saints, through tradition, are remembered as one St. Valentine with the Church giving the feast day as February 14th. Little else is known of them.
The Bishop we remember as St. Valentine is believed to be buried at what is now the Basilica of St. Valentine (Santuario Basilica di S. Valentino) in Terni, Italy the town where he is believed to have been born.
According to the website of that Shrine, archaeological evidence clearly indicates that Christian remains were buried at that site of what is mostly like the bishop we remember as St. Valentine and other Christians.
We have to leave both Rome and the third century to see the origins of the St. Valentine’s day celebrations of love. This leads us to the fourteenth Century England during the reign of King Henry II and an English language poet named Geoffrey Chaucer. A Catholic who is most famous for his accounts of pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem in The Canterbury Tales.
Medieval scholars list his poetry as the beginning of the celebration of love, courtship and marriage in connection with St. Valentine. Indeed Jack B. Oruch in an article in Speculum, the Journal of the Medieval Academy of America states that
[There is] no convincing argument that even one Valentine poem by Chaucer’s contemporaries preceded and hence influenced those of Chaucer.
The tradition which appears to begin with Chaucer in the English speaking world apparently spread into France and continued until the present. During the late 20th century the American greeting card industry is credited with further promoting the celebrations that we see today.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states that the Valentine connection is rooted in the behavior of birds described in Chaucer’s poem Parliament of Foules. (Foules is the Old English word for Fowl.) There he describes how birds choose lovers in the spring and related that to human love.
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
According to Wikipedia, that might put Chaucer’s words in connection with another St. Valentine, a bishop martyr of Genoa who died for his faith at the beginning of the fourth century. His feast day is May 2nd around the time birds do appear to choose a mate, as opposed to February 14th which is approximately one month before the end of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
February 14th is no longer the day reserved for St. Valentine since the Second Vatican Council. Today, it is the day we celebrate great missionary brothers to Eastern Europe Sts. Cyril and Methodius
As Catholics we remember St. Valentine’s day as this celebration of love cited by Geoffrey Chaucer that leads us to the sacrament and vocation of matrimony, whereas Jesus teaches us in Mark, the two leave father and mother and become one flesh.
Although the Saints Valentine are not the source of their connections to the modern celebration of romance, love and marriage. I am sure in Heaven they are quite happy to know their name is associated with the powerful sacrament of service called Matrimony that is the foundation of not only Catholic society but a healthy civil society as well.
Fr. Robert J Carr
Original in English