St Valentine, has he had his day?

By Alan Judge

I have never received a Valentine’s card. It’s not because I’m unloved. I’m sure somebody out there loves me, even if it is just the taxman and, more importantly, my cat. But what is the story behind this strange behaviour and why do the senders want to remain anonymous?

Most historical reports about Valentine seem to be rather inconclusive and have varying versions of his life and times. It seems he could have been two people, but nobody knows who the other one was – unless he had a split personality, of course. It seems that in 1969, the Catholic Church decided to dump him on the grounds that there were no confirmed reports about him or his abilities as a saint for epileptics, beekeepers and lovers. That is quite an eclectic collection for somebody who, in the 3rd century AD, could have been a Roman priest, a martyred bishop or a complete nobody. So, has he perhaps had his day now? Don’t forget, some Roman emperors had not much time for saints and were inclined to remove, with extreme prejudice, those who became a bit of a nuisance. In Valentine’s case, his persecutor was probably the Emperor Claudius II Gothicus, aka Claudius the Cruel, born 10 May 213 AD, (but how do they know the date? The modern calendar hadn’t been invented). No, I’ve never heard of him either, but it would seem that whichever emperor was issuing the instructions, martyring a priest at regular intervals could keep one in his, the emperor’s, good books. This time, it was Valentine, who had been chucked into the local jail or, in the vernacular: ‘qui missus est ad vincula locorum’. His number had come up (Numerum ascendant) because he had agreed to marry couples so the husbands would not have to go to war. His last missive, before his head was removed (priusquam remotum est caput eius) was to the daughter of his jailor, which he signed ‘from your Valentine’ although he probably wrote it thus: ‘ex Valentini’, which doesn’t have the same ring in Latin as it does in the English – ‘Lots of love from your Valentine’– does it? And adding ‘kisses’ (XXX) might have made them wonder why he added the number ‘thirty’. Anyway, it was Claudius who probably ‘remoted his caput’ on 14 February 269. Not to be left out, the fates decreed that Claudius the Cruel should succumb to a plague which ravaged the local area in the following year, 270 AD. No, really, it wasn’t Covid-270, was it? Whatever, it served him right.

Why are the senders anonymous? Well, there’s undoubtedly a bit of Anglo-Saxon paganism in there, but it wasn’t the cruel Romans who started it, and it is generally accepted that, although the first greetings card was probably delivered as early as the 15th century, the first Valentine, or ‘lover’s knot’, may have been sent in the late 17th or early 18th century. But it was probably the prudish Victorians who really put the mockers on it because they didn’t want their daughters – all of whom, in the parents’ eyes, thought their boring daughters may have had a passing resemblance to a young Barbara Windsor – to receive unsolicited mail from other males without Mum and Dad being able to first vet the contents. Hence the desire to leave out the name of the sender. Of course, there is always the possibility that some bored Victorian Mums, secretly lusting after a lusty young lover, might have believed the card was for them. I’ll leave that idea hanging…