Sunday is Valentine’s Day, an annual holiday associated with love and romance. But did you know the roots of the day go back more than 1,500 years?
St. Valentine’s Day was established as a feast day in the Roman Christian Church in the year 496 AD by Pope Gelasius I.
The original St. Valentine of Rome was martyred in 269. He was convicted by the Romans for ministering to other Christians who suffered under the persecution of the Roman Empire.
According to an early church tradition, Valentine restored the sight of his jailer’s blind daughter.
Many other stories were added to his legend over the years, including the claim he wrote a letter to the jailer’s daughter before his execution and signed it, “Your Valentine.”
Another story credits St. Valentine for performing weddings for Christian soldiers who were not permitted to marry.
Although the Anglican and Lutheran churches still acknowledge February 14 as the Feast of St. Valentine, the Roman Catholic calendar removed his official feast day in 1969.
No one can say for certain when St. Valentine’s Day became associated with romance and love, but many scholars theorize that it occurred during the Middle Ages, when legends of knightly chivalry and courtly love first became popular.
We find several mentions of the day in association with lovers in the Middle English poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. William Shakespeare and John Donne, both writing in the 1600s, made mention of Valentine’s Day as an occasion for love.
Sending Valentine’s cards to a loved one became popular in England in the mid-1800s, causing a boom in the manufacture of these cards. The practice caught on soon after in the United States as well.
British confectioner Cadbury is credited with the first heart-shaped box of candy, produced in 1868.
Today in the U.S., an estimated 190 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent, with the associated economic activity generating more than $18 billion each year.
Although St. Valentine himself is not as well-known as he was in the days when the day bearing his name was first dedicated, his name lives on in one of the world’s most beloved and most observed holidays.