Who Was St. Valentine?  The Backstory of Valentine's Day

The Mr. Valentine of Valentine’s Day was preaching in Rome in the third century when he died. He was martyred by the emperor Gothicus on February 14th, 269. Afterward, his remains were visited by pilgrims who revered him as a patron saint of beekeepers and plague victims. If not for the rest of this story, we might be using bees instead of hearts to mark February 14.

How did St. Valentine become associated with love? Here the path diverges along several legends. Possibly, Valentine sent his jailer's daughter a letter signed, "from your Valentine." Or he secretly married couples to spare the husbands from going to war. Or in the late 400’s, Pope Gelasius I may have declared 14 February to be Saint Valentine’s Day to re-tool a Roman love festival.

Perhaps our modern concept of St. Valentines Day came from Chaucer, 1,112 years after Valentine’s death. Chaucer drew a connection between love and St. Valentine in his poem, Parlement of Foules, written in about 1381. It seems that shortly after Chaucer's poem, lovers began sending each other decorated love poems on February 14, a pre-cursor to today’s Valentine’s Day cards.

Valentine’s Day is now a multi-billion dollar worldwide commercial enterprise, filled with chocolate, flowers, jewelry, dinners, and other gifts. If that seems mercenary to you, consider that the relics of St. Valentine's bones were also a commercial venture. Relics comprised the backbone of Rome's original tourism industry, so unbeknownst to him, St. Valentine has been used for profit for the past 1,754 years.