St Valentine’s Day: How it all began

St Valentine was a priest outside Rome back then in AD 270. He provided the sacraments to Christians at a time when the church was going through massive persecution.

He was imprisoned for practicing Christianity and for performing weddings for soldiers in the army.

What transpired during his imprisonment is the subject of much debate, and many say that we know nothing of St Valentine apart from the fact that he was buried in the Via Flaminia on February 14.

There is also some consensus that he was martyred for his beliefs. This was not his belief that people should have the right to be in love, but that they should have the right to be married.

There are some accounts of St Valentine being interrogated by Emperor Claudius II, and of Claudius taking an interest in Valentine and urging him to convert to the polytheist religion of the Roman Empire. The same accounts also speak of St Valentine in turn trying to convert Claudius to Christianity and say it was for this that he was ultimately sentenced to death.

True to form, he didn’t huddle defeated in his cell; he created a tradition that endures to this day. The jailer Asterius’s daughter was blind and St Valentine is said to have written a letter to the girl signed “From your Valentine”.
 Another tradition has it that he cut out hearts in parchment and gave them to persecuted Christians to remind them of God’s love.

Our modern St Valentine’s Day may bear little resemblance to the aspirations of the man who gives it its name, but it is all that remains of a man who was brave, and who believed in human rights enough to die for them. We could do with taking a leaf from his book by respecting the human rights of others.

So today, when you’re dotting your i’s with jaunty little hearts, remember the man who died because he believed in the right of those who chose to do so to wear a ring on their finger proclaiming their love for another person, in their right to let the world know who they loved enough to bind themselves together in sickness and in health, for rich or for poor, as long as they both shall live.

Happy St Valentine’s Day