Thou art all fair, my love;
Song of Solomon 4:7
In 269 AD Valentine was sentenced to death by a 3 part execution consisting of beating, stoning then beheading. He was in trouble under the Roman Emperor Claudius for secretly performing weddings for Roman soldiers. Claudius had banned soldiers from marrying because he thought single soldiers fought better without the worry of their wife and children.
Valentine had healed a Roman leaders daughter of blindness so impressivly that the father converted to Christianity.
Valentine became a feast day as a saint in the Catholic Church.
The story entered the circle of romance as part of the age of courtly love of the middle ages.
It is believed that the reason the Church placed the feast of Valentine in mid-Feb. was to "Christianize" the pagan festival Luperci, which was a fertility festival dedicated the the Roman god of agriculture as well as Romulus & Remus-the mythical founders of Rome. On this day the pagan priests would sacrifice a dog & goat in a cave where Romulus & Remus were thought to have been raised. They would dip strips in the blood and go around smearing it on women who liked it since they thought it would make them fertile over the next year. Then the bachelors would gather and draw out names of the women and be paired up with the ones they drew out of an urn. Sometimes they would end up married-sometimes not.
