Who Sent the First Valentines Day Card?
In Rome in A.D. 270, Valentine had enraged the mad emperor Claudius, who had issued an edict forbidding marriage. Claudius felt that men made poor soldiers, because they were loath to leave their families for battle. The empire needed soldiers, so Claudius, never one to fear unpopularity, abolished marriage. Valentine, bishop of Interamna, invited young lovers to come to him in secret, where he joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius learned of this “friend of lovers,” and had the bishop brought to the palace. The emperor, impressed with the young priest s dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the Roman gods, to save him from otherwise certain execution. Valentine refused to renounce Christianity and imprudently attempted to convert the emperor. On February 24, 270, Valentine was clubbed, stoned, then beheaded. History also claims that while Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, Asterius. Through his
The ancient Romans celebrated a feast of the Wolf-God on February 14. When the Catholic Church set out to change the old Pagan feast days into religious feast days, they made the feast of the wolf-god into the feast day of St. Valentine, an Italian priest who had been martyred in the year 270. Why did this saint’s feast day beco
