- The legend of St. Valentine’s Day is as mysterious and elusive as love itself. There is more than one theory, but the most widely believed dates back to the Roman Empire when Claudius II forbade men to marry during wartime. Bishop Valentine was executed on February 14th for defying the order and secretly marrying young lovers. Just before his death he wrote a love note to a young woman he had fallen in love with and signed it, “from your Valentine”
- Valentine wishes date back to the middle ages but the first known ‘Valentine’ was a poem sent from Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife in 1415 written during his sentence at the Tower of London after he was captured at the Battle of Agincourt
- Do you ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’? That expression comes from a Valentine ritual popular in the middle ages. Young men and women drew names from a bowl and pinned the name to their sleeve, the name they chose was said to be their Valentine
- Chocolate is synonymous with Valentine’s Day possibly because in the 1800s, physicians would ‘prescribe’ it to calm patients who were pinning over a lost love. Another reason could be that Casanova, known as the world’s greatest lover, is said to have eaten chocolate to make him more virile
- After taking over England, the Romans held a Pagan fertility festival in on February 14th. When the Romans left, Pope Gelsius did away with the Pagan tradition and established St. Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love in 496A.D, it was first declared a holiday in 1537 by England’s King Henry VIII
Here is an animated video version on history of valentine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGx7q4O6w2w
It tells exactly how Valentine was captured by Claudius, and was executed, right after he wrote the eternally remembered ‘from your Valentine’ letter.
Feel free to embed the video, it is using CC attribution.
Thank you for sharing this!
~Kelly