Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day folks! Garrison Keillor says that today is “…a big day for greeting card and candy sales, which goes back more than 1,500 years to the "Feast of St. Valentine" established in the fifth century, though nobody is sure exactly which of the many St. Valentines it is the feast day of.

The ancient Romans had a fertility festival in mid-February called Lupercalia in honor of Lupa..., the wolf who was said to have suckled Romulus and Remus, who went on to found the city of Rome. Lupercalia was a pagan fertility festival celebrated with sacrifices of goats and dogs, with milk and wool and blood. Young men would cut strips from the skins of the goats then strip naked and run through the city in groups, where young women would line up to be spanked with the switches, believing it would improve their fertility. Lupercalia was still popular long after the Roman Empire was officially Christian, so the Church simply came in and renovated it.

Chaucer gets credit for establishing St. Valentine's Day as a romantic occasion, when in the 14th-century he wrote in The Parlement of Foules of a spring landscape "on seynt Valentynes day" where the goddess Nature watched as every kind of bird came before her to choose and seduce their mates.

In the early 15th century, the Duke of Orleans wrote a Valentine's poem to his faraway wife while held captive in the Tower of London. Shakespeare mentioned the sending of Valentines in Ophelia's lament in Hamlet. And hundreds of years later, with the advent of cheaper postal services and mass-produced cards, the tradition of sending lacy love notes on the holiday was enormously popular with the Victorians. In 2010, more than 1 billion cards were sent worldwide” (See: The Writer’s Almanac: The Writer's Almanac, February 14, 2012).

A Farewell to Love

by Charles, Duke of Orleans
Written while imprisoned in the Tower of London and sent to the Duke’s wife.  Considered the very first Valentine:

The Tower of London, with London Bridge behind. Charles, Duke of Orleans,
seen writing, standing at a window and dispatching a letter in the courtyard.
From the Poems of Charles, Duke of Orleans. 
England; circa 1500 Shelfmark: Royal 16 F. II Page Folio Number: f.73   

          I am already sick of love,
          My very gentle Valentine,

Since for me you were born too soon,
And I for you was born too late.
God forgives he who has estranged
Me from you for the whole year.

          I am already, etc.
          My very gentle, etc.

Well might I have suspected,
That such a destiny,
Thus would have happened this day,
How much that Love would have commanded.

          I am already, etc.

Interesting to note that Charles was wounded during the Battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415 and held captive in England until 1440 when he was finally released, "speaking better English than French."

(See:A Farewell to Love @ Wikisource)