Happy Valentine's Day!
Photography Blog • 14th Feb, 17 • 0 Comments
It's thanks to the Victorians that started the tradition to send a card anonymously and Venus' favourite flower...but what were the real origins?
Valentine's Day is thought to have originated from a Roman Festival known as Lupercalia, according to History.com.
The St Valentine that inspired the holiday may have been more than one man.
The saint officially recognised by the Roman Catholic Church was a real person who died around AD 270.
An account from 1400s describes Valentine as a priest who was beheaded by Emperor Claudius II for helping Christian couples wed.
The emperor had banned marriage as he thought single men made better soldiers. Valentine felt this was unfair so he celebrated marriages in secret. When the emperor found out he was thrown in jail and sentenced to death. When he was sent to prison, he sent a letter to a young girl he had fallen in love with and signed it
"From your Valentine".
Well that's the romantic version, however, there is no actual record of Valentine's Day before 1375. It's in Chaucer's poem, Parliament of Foules, that he refers to February 14 as the day of birds coming together to find a mate.
“For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate,” he wrote and maybe invented Valentine's Day as we now know it...