Tuesday, February 14, 2023

It is the 14th of February, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Maybe it was holding, but slight- and only called once during the game and on the play that won it. Boo. Ok. Happy Valentine’s Day! I can’t believe we haven’t done a Valentine’s Day show- so let’s see if we can get to the bottom of the story of St. Valentine. 

One story goes like this:

The Roman Bishop Valentine was a pious man, strong in stature and strong in faith. When the evil pagan Emperor Claudius II threatened the bishop with beheading if he didn't renounce his faith, the bishop remained true to his name (Valentine is from "Valeo," meaning "strong" in Latin). He proclaimed his faith to Claudius, the jailers, and the inmates as he awaited his execution.

If you'd like, you can add this miraculous event to the proceedings:

While behind bars, Valentine meets a guard who has a blind daughter. He cures her, and the guard and his daughter are converted because of this miracle. Then they are sentenced to be executed with Valentine. The story continues: as the daughter waited in her solitary cell, Valentine sent her a letter of encouragement, signing it with his name and, thus, the first Valentine. 

This next story can be shoehorned into the later stories or can stand alone:

Once again, we have the evil Claudius II, who forbids men of a certain age to marry. According to the story, he believed that marriage made for weak soldiers. Thus, he became the arch-villain to young paramours hoping to get married. When Valentine enters the story as the outlaw priest performing the rite of matrimony, he is thereby associated with love and romance.

Of course, a historian might tell you that Valentine and his cult had nothing to do with love, but that didn’t stop Pope Gelasius I from seizing an opportunity. He was looking for a way to subdue the licentiousness associated with the feast of Lupercalia, a traditional fertility festival held in the middle of February. So, he decreed that the day of Valentine's martyrdom would be celebrated instead of the sexually charged love feast of Lupercalia.

Those are all fine stories. Most stories about the origins of St. Valentine’s Day weave together a few of these to add a little historical gravitas. There’s just one small problem: none of them are true. No historical data suggests that these stories are anything but later European Romantic era fabrications.

So, as for the real St. Valentine, what do we know? Very little. Shockingly little. We do know that someone named Valentine probably died or was buried on February 14th of the Julian calendar (that would be February 27th for us). That being said, Valentine was a pretty common name. Which Valentine was it? We have at least three stories from the Roman world of an individual named "Valentine" who was killed for his faith.

A more interesting question is this: Why are we so interested in the days on which individual people died?

The church, early on, took an interest in commemorating those who died in the faith. Acknowledging those saints who gave their life could encourage believers in similarly dire circumstances and strengthen the faith of all Christians. Putting them on a calendar according to their acts seems entirely consistent with a Christian message that insists on taking time and space seriously. That is, we celebrate particular days because we believe that God became a human on a specific day. Jesus rose again on a particular day, and the Christian year is celebrated according to a calendar. For every observance that might strain the facts, some point us to a greater truth.

So how did we get to love and romance associated with Valentine and his likely mid-February death?

The short answer: the Julian calendar (the one that our Gregorian calendar hoped to correct) was all over the place by the Middle Ages, such that by the time Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his famous "Parliament of Foules," English people had a spring that started mid-February. In his story, the birds began to pair up, two by two, on St. Valentine's Day. Not because Valentine himself had anything to do with love but because it was easiest to mark the days by the season and the ever-present saints’ days. Soon, Shakespeare and others began associating "Valentine" with spring and the flourishing of birds and bees. So the date became associated with spring, budding things, and romance. And Hallmark wouldn’t let a good opportunity go to waste. A Happy St. Valentine’s Day to you and yours.

The last word for today comes from 1 John, a good word on this day highlighting love:

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 14th of February 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite Valentines include the saint, Valentine Friedland the Reformer, and a friend of the pod: Valentine Greatrakes. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who will have no more football references until Fall- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.