St. Valentine's Day

The History of St Valentine's Day

vsputra Published on Feb 13, 2013

Saint Valentine was a bishop who lived in the third century in Rome who fight against Emperor Claudius II who ban marriage between two young lovers.

Saint Valentine held the law of the church and helped lovers who came to him, uniting them in a holy matrimony, but it was only a matter of time before the Emperor heard about this and had him arrested.

Valentine was imprisoned. While waiting for his sentence, his jailor Asterius approached him to use his saintly power, and heal his blind daughter. Valentine succeeded and her sight was restored -- they became close and fell in love.

After a while, the Emperor asked Saint Valentine to agree with the emperor about the ban on marriage, thus giving up his religion. Valentine refused.

Just before his execution, Valentine asked for a pen and paper and signed a farewell message to his lover, "from your Valentine"; a phrase that lived ever after.

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Saint Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day, or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is observed and celebrated in many countries around the world on February 14 each year. 

St. Valentine's Day began as a liturgical celebration for early Christian saints named Valentinus as follows:

Valentine of Rome was a priest in Rome who was martyred about AD 269 and was buried on the Via Flamina. He was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire. During his imprisonment, he is said to have healed the daughter of his jailer Asterius. Legend states that before his execution he wrote "from your Valentine" as a farewell to her.

The flower crowned skull of St Valentine is exhibited in the 

BASILICA OF SANTA MARIA, COSMEDIN (ROMA, ITALY)

The History of Valentines Day

Uploaded by: The Story of Liberty

Published on Feb 14, 2013

The History of Valentines Day -Saint Valentine

Additional Note:
One Valentine was a Roman priest and doctor who was persecuted by the emperor Claudius II for marrying Christian couples. Claudius took a liking to Valentine, but Valentine overstepped his bounds when he tried to convert the emperor, and Claudius sentenced him to death -- and an ugly death at that. He was beaten, stoned, and finally beheaded.

There is another Valentine who appears in early martyrologies: a bishop of Terni, Italy, who was also allegedly persecuted in Rome. It's been proposed that this man was one and the same as the Valentine executed by Claudius.

The feast of St. Valentine was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496. Some say that Valentine's feast day is celebrated in February because the church wanted to Christianize an ancient Roman pagan festival called Lupercalia, which centered around fertility and purification, and also took place in February.

This same situation of changing a holiday happened with Christmas being held on Dec. 25.

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The celebration of Saint Valentine did not have any romantic connotations until Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry about "Valentines" in the 14th century, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.  By the 15th century, it had evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionary, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines").Valentine's Day symbols that are used today include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards.

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Some Vintage Valentine Cards

Handwritten Valentine poem "To Susanna", 

(Cork, Ireland dated Valentine's Day, 1850)

Dated and postmarked 1862

Advertisement for Prang's greeting cards, 1883

Whitney Valentine, 1887; Howland sold her New England Valentine Company to the George C. Whitney Company in 1881

Here's a Happy Valentines  

all year round to all !!!

:)

Sources: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Youtube
  http://fromd.blogspot.com 
email: voicefromdorient@yahoo.com