Who Was the Real St. Valentine?
And how did medieval ideas regarding courtly love inform the way we celebrate Valentine's Day?
This essay was originally published on February 16th, 2024. To gain access to the entire publication archives, as well as weekly patron-only essays, become a paid subscriber below:
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 search, you might leave with the initial impression that Saint Valentine was a priest who held clandestine Christian wedding ceremonies during the reign of Claudius II (otherwise known as Claudius Gothicus), and that the Roman authorities executed Valentine as a result. Not only is this not true, but the story (allegedly) involves more than one Valentine—and the legacy of Saint Valentine would not get a romantic rebranding until the late medieval period, with the help of writers like Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower.
So, who was Valentine?
Several Saint Valentines supposedly died on February 14th during the third century. As Lisa Bitel, Professor of History & Religion at the University of Southern California, wrote several years ago in The Conversation, these saints were listed in the Acta Santorum, or “Lives of the Saints,” which was first compiled by Jesuit scholar Jean Bolland and published its first edition in 1643. From 1643 to 1940, Bollandist monks and scholars worked to investigate the lives of the saints and piece together the information they could find. But as you can imagine, this is an extraordinarily difficult task when the individuals in question lived 1500 to 1900 years before you, and all you have in some instances is a name and the year they died.
Such is the case for the first “Valentinus” listed in the Acta Santorum. The other Valentines come with a few more details, though sadly, neither involve secret elopements. Valentinus of Rome was a priest or bishop who allegedly lived in the third century and was beheaded in 270 A.D. as punishment for converting Romans to Christianity and curing a blind girl. An earlier description of his life appeared in a 6th-century text called Passio Marii et Marthae.
Another Valentinus, this time from Terni, was allegedly beheaded on the same day. His story closely mirrors that of Valentinus of Rome—he healed the sick, converted Romans, and earned the wrath of Claudius II. Were these different versions of the same story—one person split into two over the centuries? Were they two different people whose stories blended over time? Were they real men whose lives became legends, or purely legends brought to life?
We will probably never have answers to these questions, but at least what we’ve established thus far is that the “original” Saint Valentine(s) had nothing to do with romance.
What about Lupercalia? If you’re not familiar, Lupercalia is the name of a Roman pagan festival observed from February 13th to 15th. Some have tried to argue that Valentine’s Day was the Christian “replacement” for Lupercalia, but the evidence of that is scant. Lupercalia was observed as a time to promote strong health and fertility through animal sacrifice and rowdy public rituals. It is certainly in rhythm with the seasons—with spring just around the corner, Lupercalia marks a time of rebirth. While I can see how one could connect fertility to romance, the fact remains that Valentine’s Day would not be associated with love until nearly 1000 years after the fall of Rome.
This shift came about during the late medieval period, with the earliest references to a romance-centered Valentine’s Day appearing in 14th-century writings by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and Oton de Grandson (sometimes called Oton III de Grandson, so as not to confuse him with his older relative, the crusader and Savoyard knight Otto I.)
These writers reference Valentine’s Day courting rituals in their works—in particular, Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules (ca. 1370s) and De Grandson’s Songe Saint Valentine (c. 1370). Their poetry alludes to a bit of folklore common in late medieval England and France: that birds choose their mates in mid-February. As Chaucer wrote in Parlement of Foules (Fowls), “For this was on seynt Volantynys day / Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”
It’s possible that this folklore predates the 14th century, as courtship rituals evolved during the High Middle Ages. While the term “courtly love” wouldn’t be coined until 1883 by renowned medievalist Gaston Paris (in reference to the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere in Chrétien de Troyes’s 1177 romance Lancelot), medieval French texts referred to these love stories as fin amour (refined love). In medieval romances, these are almost always illicit relationships in which a brave knight courts a married lady. Think Queen Guinevere (who was married to King Arthur) and Sir Lancelot of Arthurian legend, or the romance of the Cornish knight Tristan and Irish princess Iseult (sometimes Isolde or Ysolt), who fall madly in love despite Iseult being married to Tristan’s uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. A prominent Tristan and Iseult tale appears in Thomas of Britain’s Old French poem Tristan, which was probably written around 1160.
These romances, despite their adulterous nature, were idealized by medieval writers; the noble knight worshipped his lady and performed extraordinary feats for her. It should also be noted to modern readers that these aristocrats were typically in arranged marriages—orchestrated not for compatibility, but for land, money, and political power. Therefore, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for nobles to seek love elsewhere. As Gaston Paris wrote in 1883, courtly love combined secrecy with a “kind of idolatry” in how the knight worshiped his lady.
The extent to which the courtly love of chivalric romance reflected social reality is debated. Were aristocratic men really worshipping their female lovers? I am highly skeptical of that, even if it is true that courtly affairs were normalized, particularly in the French court. In Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, Carl Lindahl of the University of Houston states that by the late 14th century, “noblemen and women were playing courtly love games on February 14,” such as love poem contests judged by female aristocrats. In the fifteenth century, Charles d’Orléans, Christine de Pizan, and John Lydgate also wrote love poems celebrating Valentine’s Day or referencing a beloved as their “Valentine.”
Valentine’s Day, like many of our holidays, would not be heavily commercialized until the 19th century, when industrialization made it far easier to mass-produce chocolate and cards. But there is one unique element to how the U.S. celebrates Valentine’s Day that may be rooted in the distant past: instead of solely being a holiday for lovers, one will find “Galentine’s Day” celebrations, parents giving cards and chocolate to their children, and schoolchildren across the country bringing sweets for every student in their class. As Professor Lindahl notes, “There is some indication that late-medieval Valentine’s Days may have been celebrations of neighborly as well as romantic love.”
I’ll leave you with these words from the 1415 charter of the city of Norwich, England. The charter argues that because animals choose their mates on Valentine’s Day, the citizens of Norwich should “make peese [peace], unite, and accord, poore and ryche to ben oon [be one] in herte, love, and charite.”
Hallmark rewrites history (again)!