Who Was Valentine?

You have to return to February 14th in the year 269 AD to understand how Valentines day came about.

269 AD was a bad year for Christians because the Romans didn’t have much in the way of regard for followers of Christ.

The reason was because the Romans were Pantheists and so they believed in several Gods, while Christians believed in only one God.

The notion that there might only be one God made the Romans feel very uneasy because a 'One God' idea undermined the very existence of the Roman Empire.

So the Romans reacted to Christians with their strongest weapon - Persecution.

For years to come the local amphitheatres had plenty in the way of stock. Your average Roman could spend Sunday afternoon watching pesky Christians being mauled by lions or dismembered by burly gladiators as the Roman leaders sought to be done with them.

Emerging from this persecution was a man that every card manufacturer and rose grower should be grateful for - a pig headed individual called Valentine.

Valentine was a devout Christian and even the threat of death from the Romans wouldn’t deter him from practicing his religion.

He flaunted his beliefs in front of the Romans - even carrying out secret Christian Marriages in the dead of night - a practice forbidden by Claudius II, the Roman Emperor.

Such blatant disregard for authority had to be stamped out and so as was the custom of the day, the decision was made to put an end to Valentines life.

The date of his execution was set for February 14th.

Concidentially, February 14th was also the day that Romans honoured Juno, the Goddess of women and marriage and queen of all Gods. And Juno day was something of an event in early Rome...

Back then, chaps and lasses led very separate lives - no mixed schools or kissing behind the bicycle sheds.

However, each year in celebration of Juno, young people participated in a game where the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars.

The young bucks of the time drew a girls name from the jar and this became their partner for the Juno festival. It was commonplace for these couples to eventually get married.

The date of Valentines execution coincided with this Roman lottery.

To further add to the mystery surrounding Valentine, legend has it that while Valentine sat in prison awaiting execution he befriended the jailers daughter. How that came about is anyones guess - a jailers daughter befriending a man about to be executed...hmm...

Anyway St. Val and the jailers daughter became bosom pals, and the story goes that on the eve of his execution he sent her a farewell note that he signed 'From Your Valentine'.

Little did he know that these three little words would be immortalised as an indication of love for centuries to come.

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