Saint Valentine's Day

February 14

Valentine's Day on Feb. 14 has its origin in Roman pagan religious history and the Christian feast day called Saint Valentine's Day.

The Parentalia and Feralia festivals of purification were celebrated between February 13-18 in ancient Rome. Opening day, February 13, was dedicated to peace, love and the household gods.

February 14 was the second day of Parentalia called the Lupercalia. The day is dedicated to Juno-Lupa, the she-wolf. In The Inferno, Dante describes how in "The Dark Wood:" [Woodcut by Gustav Doré]

..a She-Wolf drove upon me, a starved horror (48)

ravening and wasted beyond all belief.
She seemed a rack for avarice, gaunt and craving.
Oh the many souls she has brought to endless grief!

The Lupercal is the setting for the opening scenes of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. It is the feast time and Caesar says to Antonius:

Forget not, in your speed, Antonius, to touch Calpurnia; for our elders say, the barren, touched in this holy chase, shake off their sterile curse. Act 1, Scene II.

In this scene, Antonius is one of the Luperci, young men (priests) who ran a course in the city of Rome from the Cave of the Lupercal (the place where, by tradition, the founders of Rome - Romulus and Remus - were suckled by the she-wolf) around the Palatine Hill, in order to purify the ancient site. They wore the skins and blood of goats sacrificed in rites held earlier in the day. During the run, the Luperci struck the women they encountered with strips of goat skin (called a "februa") to promote fertility.

February 15 was the second day of Lupercal and the third day of Parentalia . The day is dedicated to Juno Februata, Juno the Fructifier. The Luperci paired young men and women: boys individually drew girls' names from a box, and became paired with them until the following Lupercalia.

The Christian feast is named for Saint Valentine, of whom there are not one, but two. The first is Saint Valentine (d.c.269) said to be a priest in Rome and a physician who was beheaded there under Claudius the Goth and buried on the Via Flaminia. There is a second Valentine in the martyrology who was a Christian bishop who lived in Interamna, the modern Terni. This Valentine was scourged, imprisoned and beheaded by Placidus, prefect of Interamna. Some scholars believe that these are one in the same man, i.e., a Roman priest who became bishop in Interamna and was then sentenced there and brought back to Rome for execution.

By tradition, the relic bones of the first Saint Valentine are in Saint Praxed's Church in Rome (the subject of a poem by Robert Browning, The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church ) and those of the second Saint Valentine are in a basilica in Terni.

In midieval legend, Saint Valentine's Day was the day that birds paired. In the 14th century, a sweetheart was chosen for a day by lot. Messages sent between these randomly chosen pairs were a forerunner of the modern Valentine's Day Card.

In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer relates a pre-Lenten celebration in the town of Épinal in the Vosges region of France where bonfires were kindled and the young townsfolk went from door to door pairing- up couples who were then forced into a mock marriage and required to walk arm in arm around the fire and exchange gifts intended as ransom or redemption. They were called féchenots and féchenottes or Valentines. (p.697).

Symbols of Love always express a duality where antgonistic elements are reconciled: the cross; the yin-yang. The goal of sacred love, ultimately, is the elimination of dualism and separation through mystical union, the hidden center of which is found in the symbols of the rose, the lotus, the heart. This center is said to be "hidden" because it does not exist in ordinary space/time.

In Canto XXIII of Paradiso, [Italian Text] Dante writes of the Virgin:

"Quivi è la rosa in che 'l verbo divino
carne si fece; "

"Here is the Rose,
Wherein the Word Divine was made incarnate;"

In the pseuepigraphon 3 (Greek Apocalypse of) Baruch written circa First to Third Century c.e., biological union as a result of "sinful desire" rather than sacred love is the cause of the fall of Adam:

When God made the garden and commanded Michael to gather two hundred thousand and three angels so that they could plant the garden, Michael planted the olive and Gabriel the apple; Uriel, the nut; Raphael, the melon; and Satanael, the vine. For at first his name in former times was Satanael, and similarly all the angels planted various trees.

And again I Baruch said to the angel, "Lord, show me the tree through which the serpent deceived Eve and Adam." And the angel said to me, "Listen, Baruch, in the first place, the tree was the vine, but secondly, the tree (is) sinful desire which Satanael spread over Eve and Adam, and because of this God has cursed this vine because Satanael had planted it, and by it he deceived the protoplast Adam and Eve." 3 Baruch 4:7-9.

Use of Sacrificial Skins

In the marriage ceremony of the Wawanga of East Africa a he-goat is killed and a long strip of skin is cut from its belly. The strip is cut lengthwise and placed over the bride's head so that it rests on her shoulders. The pronouncement made by the bridegroom's father or elderly male relative includes these words: "...if you leave us for any other man, may this skin repudiate you, and may you become barren." Sir James Frazer, Folkllore in the Old Testament, p. 211.