Happy Epilepsy Day

Tuesday, February 14, 2006
There's enough myth going around about the origin of Valentine's Day to commission a scholar to cut to the chase. This was done, but knowing the Teaching Company would ultimately take down the free lecture, your scribe, like a squirrel storing nuts for winter, wisely took notes. Voilà:

Who's Valentine?
There were some 13 Valentines in the ancient Church, two of which were most popular, both having been martyred on Feb. 14th (probably therefore the same person). In the 6th-9th century their martyr accounts were written. Strangely, they have a history of curing epilepsy.

Why then the courtship connection?
In the late 14th century Chaucer wrote four poems called The Parliament of Fowls. The poems took Valentine's Day as their theme, and in them the narrator witnesses birds gathering on that day to choose their mates. Other poets borrowed the motif, probably from Chaucer. Thus by the late 14th/early 15th century Valentine and courtship were linked. Christine de Pizan et. al. would later try their hands at Valentine's Day poems.

Researchers assumed that Chaucer chose Valentine's day because of the link with courtship, but there is no link between the actual St. Valentine feast on Feb. 14th and courtship that scholars can find before Chaucer. Up until then the St. Valentine cult was only linked with epilepsy cures.

Henry Ansgar Kelly has suggested that the link came about because Chaucer was thinking of Valentine of Genoa (which is a local Italian festival celebrated in early May). Chaucer had traveled to Genoa in Italy in 1373, and during this traveling he came across the feast day, and this must have been what he had in mind when he wrote his very Springtime reflections on courtship.

Contemporaries misread the poem, and associated it with the more popular St. Valentine's day of Feb. 14th. It is still a mystery how the literary motifs of Chaucer were translated into practical courtship rituals.

Then what's all this "Lupercalia" business?
In Alban Butler's popular The Lives of the Saints (18th century), the letter of Pope Gelasius denouncing the Roman feast of Lupercalia (celebrated on Feb. 15th) is wrongly thought to have led to the pagan festival being "replaced" by the Pope with St. Valentine's day.

Though that interesting connection is commonly made, now you know the romance-rotting truth. |