Valentine’s Day
The pagan roots of Valentine’s Day, the feast of lovers, have been unrestrained and uninhibited. Then a Pope arrived who Christianized the celebration with a saint, or reasonably, with three saints.
The custom of Valentine’s Day, the feast of lovers, dates again to Roman instances, in 496 AD, when then-Pope Gelasius I wished to place an finish to the Lupercalia, the traditional pagan rites devoted to the god of fertility, Lupercus.
These rites have been celebrated on February fifteenth and concerned unrestrained festivities and have been brazenly in distinction with the morals and the Christian thought of affection.
Bare and whipped. Particularly, the spotlight of the pageant occurred when Roman matrons provided themselves, spontaneously and on the street, to the whippings of a gaggle of bare younger males, devotees of the wild Faunus Lupercus. Even pregnant ladies willingly submitted to the ritual, satisfied that it might be good for the delivery of their little one.
In the end, the spectacle provided by the our bodies of these good-looking younger males, who made their approach utterly bare or, at most, with a leather-based kilt tight round their hips, was sufficient to alleviate the ache.
To “baptize” the feast of affection, Pope Gelasius I made a decision to maneuver it to the day past – devoted to Saint Valentine – making him, in a approach, the protector of lovers.
SAINT VALENTINE ARRIVES. However is it one, two, or extra? There are, nonetheless, many saints named Valentine, and, aside from the truth that they have been all martyrs, not a lot is understood about them. Two are essentially the most well-known.
The primary, born in Interamna (immediately Terni) in 176, protected lovers, guided them in the direction of marriage, and inspired them to carry kids into the world. Spiritual (and non-historical) literature describes the saint as a healer of epileptics and a defender of affection tales.
Particularly when these are sad: it’s mentioned, for instance, that he made peace between two engaged {couples} who have been arguing, providing them a rose.
“Combined marriages.” The second, nonetheless, is claimed to have died in Rome on February 14, 274, beheaded. In accordance with some sources, he can be the identical bishop of Terni. For others – a extra believable thesis – he can be one other Christian martyr. For nonetheless others, he would by no means have existed.
In any case, it’s mentioned that Valentine was executed as a result of he had celebrated the wedding between the Christian Serapia and the Roman legionary Sabinus, who was as a substitute a pagan. The ceremony befell rapidly, as a result of the younger lady was ailing. And the 2 spouses died, collectively, simply as Valentine was blessing them. The martyrdom of the celebrant would then shut the circle of tragedy.
The origin. In actuality, the fashionable credit score for having consecrated Saint Valentine because the patron saint of affection is to be attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, the creator of the Canterbury Tales, who on the finish of the 14th century wrote – in honor of the marriage between Richard II and Anne of Bohemia – The Parliament of Fowls, a poem in 700 verses that associates Cupid with Saint Valentine.
Who thus turned the otherworldly middleman of the dimension of Courtly Love.
