OK, let’s start the story with the part that we’re pretty sure about. We know that Valentine’s Day is a Roman co-opting of a ritual from a previous civilization (kinda like another we reported just last week; wow, it’s like Groundhog Day all over again!) It was the Greeks who can claim credit for inventing a late-winter tribute to love; they had a month-long tribute to fertility, from January 15^th to February 15^th, called Gamelion. The Romans adopted that idea, but then took it one step further, by capping off the month with a final day-long tribute to Lupercus, who was a half-naked goat-man. (Honest.) On that day, priests would slaughter a goat, butcher it into strips, dip the thongs in blood and walk through the streets whipping young ladies with the bloody pieces. This would hopefully ensure their fertility and an easy childbirth. At the end of the event, single men and women would draw names out of an urn, and be pledged to each other for, um…well, you know.

But later, as they tend to do, the Christians showed up and took all the fun out of it. Sometime around 270 AD, there was a pope whom history remembers as Claudius the Cruel (love that!). He felt that all this romance was sapping the manhood of his soldiers, so he banned marriages and engagements in Rome during the love month. But a priest named Valentine defied him, and continued to marry couples in secret. When this was discovered, Valentine was brought before the prefect of Rome, who ruled that he should be beaten to death and have his head cut off.

Later, in 496, Pope Gelasius (fun fact: the last pope of berber origin) honored the priest’s sacrifice in a bit of a bait-and-switch. He put the final kibosh on Lupercus on the 15^th, but gave folks a consolation prize of having a tribute to the martyr (who by this point had been declared a saint), to be held on the day he was reportedly killed, February 14. From which we get Saint Valentine’s Day.

In addition to being the Saint of Love, Valentine is also the patron saint of victims of epilepsy, and of beekeepers. (Joke: ‘A beekeeper and an epileptic walk into a bar’…no, no, no, not going there!) And though it’s unlikely that Saint Valentine had his body cut into bloody strips, he is literally loved to pieces. His body is buried in the Catacombs of Saint Valentino in Rome, but his head is across town, and crowned with flowers, in the church of Santa Praseede. (Other body parts are claimed to be buried in churches in Ireland, Czech, Poland, Malta…)

But hold your bloody thongs right there! There is an long-ongoing (‘long-going’?) argument over whether the above story is true, and if so, which martyr is being honored. The name ‘Valentine’ comes from the Latin ‘valens’ meaning ‘strength’ (from which we get things like Prince Valiant, and the ‘valence’ of an element describing its essential properties). It’s no surprise that Valentine is a popular name, and there are, in fact, dozens of saints named Valentine. And one in particular is a Bishop from Terni (about 100 km from Rome) who may have also died on February 14^th. Or, he may have been the same Saint Valentine, who moved from Terni, came to Rome and got martyrd. One Valentine, or two?

And there is also confusion in the Catholic Church itself. The Catholic Encyclopedia (researched and published in the United States) lists a possible third candidate for Saint Valentine, who was martyrd along with some companions in the Roman province of Africa. But the Roman Martyrology (published since 1583, the same year Rome switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar) lists only the priest from Rome as the true Valentine.

It’s all so conjectural that in 1969, confounded by all this Valentine confusion, the Catholic Church removed Valentine’s Day from the General Roman Calendar.

But love endures. As long ago in the days of the Greeks, the festival has left the church and returned to the citizens. Sure, these days it’s only a one-day affair. That is, unless you consider that this year the 14th falls on a Tuesday, which is a crappy day for a date. Don’t wait, grab an urn and some goat-meat, and kick off the weekend with a bang (pun).

Screw Valentine’s Day (another pun!). Happy Gamelion!!