What was the love story behind Valentine's Day?

Answer 1

St Valentine's Day was originally the Roman feast of Lupercalia, and was celebrated on 15 February. It started in the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, 14 February was a holiday to honour Juno, the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, 15 February, began the Feast of Lupercalia. Although Valentine's Day itself was not originally associated with romantic love, there was some association with love within the ancient Roman feast from which it derived. One of the customs involved name drawing. On February 14, the eve of the festival of Lupercalia, Roman girls had their names written on slips of paper and placed into jars. The young men would each draw out a girl's name from the jar, and the couple would be partners during the festival. On occasion, the pairing of the children lasted a full year, and they would sometimes fall in love and later marry.

The feast of St Valentine was first declared by Pope Gelasius I to be on 14 February 496. It was declared in memory of the martyrdom of St Valentine, a priest at Rome in the days of Claudius II. St Valentine and Saint Marius helped Christian martyrs and secretly married couples, and for this act Valentine was apprehended, condemned and executed in 270 A.D.

Note that originally, Valentine's Day had nothing to do with celebrating romantic love. The first known recorded association of St Valentine's Day with romantic love was in the 14th century in England and France, where February 14 came to be recognised traditionally the day on which birds paired off to mate. This is probably due to the poem Parlement of Foules(1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer.