February 14, Valentine’s Day, which is a day when lonely people get a little twisted and couples celebrate like a real holiday, has been celebrated all over the world as Valentine’s Day for hundreds of years and lovers shout out their love to each other. Although today it causes the formation of a large industry with billions of dollars, we can say that the story of the emergence of Valentine’s Day is a little different and even contains many religious elements.
Valentine’s Day, which is Valentine’s Day, is named after a Christian saint. However, even this story is not known for certain because there are many saints with the same name. When we examine the legends a little more, it is even possible to encounter stories that this holiday is actually a pagan tradition. Let’s take a closer look at the legends about Valentine’s Day and see in detail when and how it first appeared.
According to the first legend, Valentine was a saint who rebelled against the emperor who forbade marriage of young people:
When the Catholic Church records are examined, it is seen that there is more than one Christian saint named Valentine. In other words, it is unfortunately not possible to give a definite answer to the question of how Valentine’s Day came about. However, we are sure that everyone has heard of the most popular one among them. This story is about a love-hating emperor in Roman times.
The year is the 3rd century AD. Romans St. He had Jesus crucified, Christianity remained a secret religion. However, there were many people who struggled for the sake of this religion and tried to spread it. These individuals were both religiously important figures and passive resistance to the heretical Roman emperors. One of these people was Valentine.
Valentine was a simple clergyman. Until that extraordinary ban came to light. The Roman emperor of the period II. Claudius forbade marriage and starting a family. Because he believed that men without wives and children would be much stronger warriors. In other words, love was officially blocked by the state.
Like all religions, Christianity encourages people to marry and start a family. As a requirement of this belief, Valentine ignored the emperor’s decision and secretly began to marry young couples. Of course, this news was soon heard, and Valentine was executed by order of the emperor. People who died while serving the religion are declared saints in Christianity. Thus, Valentine became a saint, and his effort spawned Valentine’s Day.
According to a different legend, Valentine fell in love with the guard’s daughter in the prison where he was tortured:
Even though it would be accepted as the official religion of the state in the following years, in the first years of Christianity, those who belonged to this religion were seen as rebels by the state, and those who were informed that they were believers were arrested, tortured, exiled and often even killed. One of them, Valentine, was actually someone who helped the prisoners escape.
Upon hearing the news that a Christian had been imprisoned and tortured, Valentine and his friends took great risks to save them, entering the blood-curdling prisons of Rome and trying to kidnap their friends. Things didn’t always go well. One day, Valentine was captured and imprisoned in a dungeon where he would be mortally tortured.
By a twist of fate, a love affair broke out between Valentine’s daughter and the prison guard’s daughter. The two were secretly sending letters to each other, and perhaps for the first time in history, they were using the word darling. Of course, Valentine could not stand the tortures, he died soon, became a saint, and the legend of Valentine’s Day remained after his name.
Valentine’s Day is originally a pagan festival, but its name and content have been changed to Christianize it:
The Roman Empire, which had many different pagan beliefs for thousands of years, decided to clean up its past when it made Christianity the state religion. For this purpose, old temples, statues and many other figures were removed. When it was time for cultural figures, things started to get a little confusing.
For many years there was a festival called Lupercalia, which was celebrated by the pagan Romans. This festival was a fertility festival dedicated to Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, and Faunus, the god of agriculture. Celebrated on the 15th of February every year, Lupercalia was an enthusiastic ceremony attended by all the people.
During this ceremony, Luperci priests, a pagan cult, entered a cave where Romulus and Rumulus believed were fed by a she-wolf. Here they sacrificed a goat to increase fertility and a dog to be cleansed of their sins. They spread the bloody fur on crop fields and on women to spread fertility and fertility. Then single women would write their names and put them in a large vase. Single men would choose a name from this vase and there would be marriages.
The pagan festival Lupercalia is combined with the legend of Saint Valentine, resulting in Valentine’s Day, the Valentine’s Day we all know:
- Geoffrey Chaucer
Lupercalia festival started to stand out gradually in the 270s AD, that is, at the time of the rise of Christianity, but the church was not in that strong position yet. In the 5th century, Pope Gelasius successfully declared Valentine’s Day the day before this festival and announced that Lupercalia was also illegal.
It was declared Valentine’s Day, but it was not until the 14th century that it was considered a Valentine’s Day as we know it today. February 14 was seen as the day when the mating season of birds began. Valentine’s Day was first mentioned as a romantic celebration in the poem Parliament of Foules, written by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in 1375.
Valentine’s Day was celebrated with small celebrations, but it was in the 15th century that it became a real celebration and became popular. Charles, Duke of Orleans, who was captured at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and imprisoned in the Tower of London, wrote a letter to his wife to celebrate Valentine’s Day. In the following years, King Henry V wrote a Valentine’s Day note to the woman he fell in love with, and it became a tradition.
The popularity of Valentine’s Day in the modern world:
The Valentine’s Day tradition, which quickly became popular in England, gradually spread to the United States, France and Australia. When we came to the 17th century, Valentine’s Day was celebrated in all these countries. In the 18th century, the tradition of sending notes to each other and giving gifts began among students.
With the development of printing technologies in the 20th century, special cards for Valentine’s Day began to be printed. Moreover, because they were cheap, there was a real mail spree that day. Today, close to 200 million cards are sent every Valentine’s Day in the United States alone. If we add the rest of the world, received gifts and digital shares to this number, we come across an industry that will not easily fall behind.
We talked about the legends about Valentine’s Day, which emerged when a pagan festival was Christianized and then turned into a commercial sector, and how it came to be today. Don’t wait for a special day to buy a gift or express your love to your loved one, make every day special. You can share your thoughts in the comments.
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