On This Day: St. Valentine martyred - Feb. 14, 269

[jgo]

Happy Valentine's Day!!

(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Saint Valentine

Saint Valentine of Rome was martyred on February 14 in AD 269. The Feast of Saint Valentine, also known as Saint Valentine's Day, was established by Pope Gelasius I in AD 496 to be celebrated on February 14 in honour of the Christian martyr.

February 14 is Saint Valentine's Day in the Lutheran calendar of saints. Valentine is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on February 14. The Church of England had him in its pre-Reformation calendars, and restored his mention as bishop and martyr in its 1661–62 Book of Common Prayer, and most provinces of the Anglican Communion celebrate his feast. The Catholic Church includes him in its official list of saints, the Roman Martyrology.

[General Roman Calendar]

Saint Valentine was also in the General Roman Calendar for celebration as a simple feast until 1955, when Pope Pius XII reduced all such feasts to just a commemoration within another celebration. The 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar removed this mention, leaving it for inclusion only in local calendars such as that of Balzan, Malta. His commemoration was still in the 1962 Roman Missal and is thus observed also by those who, in the circumstances indicated in Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, use that edition.

July 6 is the date on which the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the Roman presbyter Valentine; on July 30 it observes the feast of the Hieromartyr Valentine, Bishop of Interamna. Members of the Greek Orthodox Church named Valentinos (male) or Valentina (female) may observe their name day on the Western ecclesiastical calendar date of February 14.

English 18th-century antiquarians Alban Butler and Francis Douce, noting the obscurity of Saint Valentine's identity, suggested that Saint Valentine's Day was created as an attempt to supersede the pagan holiday of Lupercalia (mid-February in Rome). This idea has lately been dismissed by academics and researchers, such as Jack B. Oruch of the University of Kansas, Henry Ansgar Kelly of the University of California, Los Angeles and Michael Matthew Kaylor of Masaryk University. Many of the current legends that characterize Saint Valentine were invented in the 14th century in England, notably by Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle, when the feast day of February 14 first became associated with romantic love.

[Chaucer]

Oruch charges that the traditions associated with "Valentine's Day", documented in Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules and set in the fictional context of an old tradition, did not exist before Chaucer. He argues that the speculative explanation of sentimental customs, posing as historical fact, had their origins among 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. In the French 14th-century manuscript illumination from a Vies des Saints, Saint Valentine, bishop of Terni, oversees the construction of his basilica at Terni; there is no suggestion here that the bishop was a patron of lovers.

[Romance and devotion]

During the Middle Ages, it was believed that birds paired in mid-February. This was then associated with the romance of Valentine. Although these legends differ, Valentine's Day is widely recognised as a day for romance and devotion.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine

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[Aristus]

1. The story goes that Valentinus was performing marriages in Rome in contravention of the laws

forcing young men into the legions during the military crises of the 3rd Century. He was arrested and condemned to death. He performed one last marriage ceremony from his cell the night before his execution, and gave the young lovers a note to be read only after his beheading. It read: "From your Valentine".

There are many, many variations on this story, which, being hagiography, is probably more myth and legend than history.