This was when a Christian priest named Valentine came to defend love in the empire. Valentine began to secretly marry couples despite the emperors orders. When Emperor Claudius was informed of these ceremonies Valentine was sent to prision where he remained unitl his death on February 14 in the year 270. 

     It wasn't unitl a few hundred years later when Valentine's Day began to develop as we know it. At the time Christianity was beginning to take control of Europe. As part of this effort the Church sought to do away with pagan holidays. Valentine's Day came to replace a mid-February fertility festival called Lupercalia. In honor of his scarifice for love Valentine was made a saint and Lupercalia renamed in his honor. 

     Until today the tradition of honoring Valentine continues. The themes of love and feritlity taken from the ancient meanings of the holiday have endured and evolved with our contemporary adaptations of its meanings. 
 

     One of the customs of the young people was name-drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man drew a slip. The girl whose name was chosen was to be his sweetheart for the year. 

     Legend has it that the holiday became Valentine's Day after a priest named Valentine. Valentine was a priest in Rome at the time Christianity was a new religion. The Emperor at that time, Claudius II, ordered the Roman soldiers NOT to marry or become engaged. Claudius believed that as married men, his soldiers would want to stay home with their families rather than fight his wars. Valentine defied the Emperor's decree and secretly married the young couples. He was eventually arrested, imprisioned, and put to death 

     Valentine was beheaded on February 14th, the eve of the Roman holiday Lupercalia. After his death, Valentine was named a saint. As Rome became more Christian, the priests moved the spring holiday from the 15th of February to the 14th - Valentine's Day. Now the holday honored Saint Valentine instead of Lupercus. 
 

     In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honor Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the 'Feast of Lupercalia', which was a time to honor several other Gods and Goddesses. 

In ancient Rome, the lives of young boys and young girls were strictly separate. However, during the Lupercalia Festival, the boys would each pick a girl's name from a vase. The boys then became partners for the duration of the festival with the girl that they chose. During the festival, the pairs of children danced and played together. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry. 

Bibliography:  
   Valentine's Day by Cass R. Sandak 
   Crestwood House, New York 

     Christian legends believe that Valentine's Day is the Feast of St. Valentine, who was beheaded on February 14th under the orders of Roman Emperor Claudius II. The Emperor believed that if his men remained single his army would be larger. He wouldn't lose men to wanting to stay home with the family. Valentine was arrested and beheaded because he would secretly marry people forbidden to wed. He became known as the patron saint of lovers. 

     Believing that Valentine's Day exists to celebrate the memory of a saint who valued love and romance, many exchange love notes or Valentines. Others believe that Valentine was later confused with the Norman French word 'galantin' meaning "lover of women". Through the passage of time, the two have merged with the result of St. Valentine being remembered as the patron saint of lovers. 
 

     St. Valentines Day: 5th Century Rome

"...The Catholic Churchs attempt to paper over a popular pagan fertility rite with the clubbing death and decapitation of one of its own martyrs is the origin of this lovers holiday. 

As early as the fourth century B.C., the Romans engaged in an annual young mans rite of passage to the god Lupercus. The names of teenage women were placed in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus, a man was assigned a woman companion, for their mutual entertainment and pleasure (often sexual), for the duration of a year, after which another lottery was staged. Determined to put an end to this eight-hundred-year-old practice, the early church fathers sought a "lovers saint to replace the deity Lupercus. They found a likely candidate in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years earlier. 

In Rome in A.D. 270, Valentine had enraged the mad emperor the mad emperor Claudius II, who had issued an edict forbidding marriage. Claudius felt that married 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 priests 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 unswerving faith, he miraculously restored her sight. He signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that would live long after its author died. 

From the Churchs standpoint, Valentine seemed to be the ideal candidate to usurp the popularity of Lupercus. So in A.D. 496, a stern Pope Gelasius outlawed the mid-February Lupercian festival. But he was clever enough to retain the lottery, aware of Romans love for games of chance. Now into the box that had once held the names of available and willing single women were placed the names of saints. Both men and women extracted slips of paper, and in the ensuing year they were expected to emulate the life of the saint whose name they had drawn. Admittedly, it was a different game, with different incentives; to expect a woman and draw a saint must have disappointed many a Roman male. The spiritual overseer of the entire affair was its patron saint, Valentine. With reluctance, and the passage of time, more and more Romans relinquished their pagan festival and replaced it with the Churchs holy day. 

Quouted from "Panatis Extraordinary Origins of Everyday things, Charles Panati, Harper & Row Publishers,New York, NY 1987 pp 50-52 

"Valentine was a pagan priest who lived during the Roman persecution 
against Christians. Though he wasn't a Christian himself, he was repulsed by the 
Roman tortures & began secretly to protect believers. 

Helping Christians was a serious crime & Valentine landed in a dull, dark 
prison. His time there would have been fairly short, except while there he 
became a Christian. As a result: Valentine was sentenced to death. 
During his last days, Valentine often thought of his family & friends. 
Since they were forbidden to visit, they developed an unique way of sending 
messages to each other. Valentine would squeeze his arms through the bars in his 
window, to reach the violets that grew outside. Each day, after picking a 
heart-shaped leaf, he would carefully pierce it with a message like "Remember Your 
Valentine". He would then send it up to his loved ones by way of homing 
pigeons supplied by his family. Toward the end of his life the message changed to a 
simple, daily "I love You." 

When he refused to renounce his Christian faith and turn back to the Lord 
he had grown to love, Valentine was clubbed to death in his cell on Feb 14, 
269 AD. 

For Valentine, love was more than the mushy gushy stuff we think of today. 
It was above sentimental feelings or infatuation. It was deeper than sexual 
attraction or physical desire. It was a love tough enough to survive the 
rugged times of life. 

Love is more than a feeling that comes and goes. It is not based on 
circumstance, climate, clothes, character or come-ons. It is a commitment 
that carries a price tag. It demands action. It means caring for a person even if they r in a bitter angry mood. It means putting the other person's needs, desires and wishes before yours. It means going out of your way to accept, respect and forgive. 

This Valentine's Day, remember Valentine." 

Unknown Source. 

Valentine: noun

• A sentimental or humorous greeting card to a sweetheart, friend, or family member on Saint Valentine's Day
• A gift sent as a token of love to one's sweetheart on Saint Valentine's Day
• A person singled out especially as one's sweetheart on Saint Valentine's Day

Valentine Cards

Traditionally, mid-February was a Roman time to meet and court prospective mates. The Lupercian lottery (under penalty of mortal sin), Roman young men did institute the custom of offering women they admired and wished to court handwritten greetings of affection on February 14. The cards acquired St. Valentines name: 

As Christianity spread, so did the Valentines Day card. The earliest extant card was sent in 1415 by Charles, duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. It is now in the British Museum. 

In the sixteenth century, St. Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, attempted to expunge the custom of cards and reinstate the lottery of saints names. He felt that Christians had become wayward and needed models to emulate. However, this lottery was less successful and shorter-lived than Pope Gelasiuss. And rather than disappearing, cards proliferated and became more decorative. Cupid, the naked cherub armed with arrows dipped in love potion, became a popular valentine image. He was associated with the holiday because in Roman mythology he is the son of Venus, goddess of love and beauty. 

By the seventeenth century, handmade cards were oversized and elaborate, while store-bought ones were smaller and costly. In 1797, a British publisher issued "The Young Mans Valentine Writer," which contained scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own. Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches, called "mechanical valentines," and a reduction in postal rates in the next century ushered in the less personal but easier practice of mailing valentines. That, in turn, made it possible for the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden appearance of racy verse in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian. The burgeoning number of obscene valentines caused several countries to ban the practice of exchanging cards. In Chicago, for instance, late in the nineteenth century, the post office rejected some twenty-five thousand cards on the ground that they were not fit to be carried through the U.S. mail. 

The first American publisher of valentines was printer and artist Esther Howland. Her elaborate lace cards of the 1870s cost from five to ten dollars, with some selling for as much as thirty-five dollars. Since that time, the valentine card business has flourished. With the exception of Christmas, Americans exchange more cards on Valentines Day than at any other time of the year...." 

Quouted from "Panatis Extraordinary Origins of Everyday things, Charles Panati, Harper & Row Publishers,New York, NY 1987 pp 50-52 

• Acrostic valentines 
  - had verses in which the first lines spelled out the loved one's name 

• Cutout valentines 
  - made by folding the paper several times and then cutting out a lacelike design with small, sharp, pointed scissors 

• Pinprick valentines 
  - made by pricking tiny holes in a paper with a pin or needle. creating the look of lace 

• Theorem or Poonah valentines 
  - designs that were painted through a stencil cut in oil paper, a style that came from the Orient 

• Rebus valentines 
  - verses in which tiny pictures take the place of some of the words. (an eye would take the place of the word I) 

• Puzzle Purse valentines 
  - a folded puzzle to read and refold. Among their many folds were verses that had to be read in a certain order 

• Fraktur valentines 
  - had ornamental lettering in the style of illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages