The Real St. Valentine

Who was the real St. Valentine, and how did medieval ideas regarding courtly love inform the way we celebrate Valentine's Day?

Image of two lovers from the Codex Manesse, the most comprehensive existing manuscript of Middle High German Minnesang poetry. The Codex Manesse was written and illustrated beginning in about 1304, and wasn’t completed until about 1340. Via the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.

Now that Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and I’ve eaten far too many cupcakes, let’s explore the origins of this holiday. They may be more complicated than you think.

As I’ve noted before in this publication, investigating the roots of folklore can be both incredibly fascinating and frustrating—frustrating because stories so often overlap, shape-shift, and transform over time, even if that mystery is what makes folklore captivating. I thought it would be fun to investigate the saint whose name is so synonymous with romance, knowing well that like many examples of popular folkloric figures, some of the theories promoted about him online would be wrong.

For example: if one were to conduct a very cursory Google…