Who Was Saint Valentine anyway? (Updated for 2018)

Many of us may have heard the story of St.Valentine's in Sunday school or even in grade school, but who still remembers the story?

Well, don't worry too much about it.. There's a good chance that the Patron Saint of Lovers never existed anyway.... Or, if he did exist, he had nothing to do with lovers or February 14th.

Valentine depicted in woodcut dating to the 15th century, many centuries after he was to have lived.

The feast of St. Valentine was not established until 496 by that well-known pontiff Pope Gelasius I. (Nope, I'd never heard of him either.) St. Valentine was either a Roman priest, a bishop in Terni (an early Italian city about 100 miles north of Rome), or a martyr somewhere in the Roman African provinces. He was not pictured until 1493 when he appeared in a woodcut in an early book of world history named The Nuremberg Chronicle. The text alongside the woodcut claims he was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius II (AD 268-270).

We don't know what is truth and what is legend.

Whatever the true story, somewhere along the way, the name of Valentine became involved with all of this Love Stuff. We really don't know what is truth and what is legend.

The story is that Emperor Claudius was persecuting Christians in Rome, and that anyone caught helping the Christians or marrying them was considered a criminal. The Christian Valentine was marrying Christians and he was caught. One version of the legend is that Claudius liked Valentine until Valentine tried to convert Claudius at which time Valentine was beheaded.

Another version says that Claudius felt that men made better soldiers if they were unmarried so he forbade any of his soldiers to marry. But Valentine married many soldiers to their sweethearts.. until he was caught. Another part of the legend is that Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his jailer while he was awaiting his death... and that, right before he went to his death, he sent her a note signed "From Your Valentine".  Others say that Valentine fell in love with the blind daughter and her sight wasn't restored until he was executed. 

Now, many people think that there wasn't any association between St. Valentine and love and romance until the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, and he really wasn't popularized as the "Patron Saint of Love" until the 17th century when he was mentioned in the popular "Lives of the Saints".

A Romantic Story

So we don't know who Valentine really was, nor do we know if he had anything to do with marriage, love, and those cute notes we call Valentine's Day cards. But it is a nice story, isn't it? The idea of people risking their lives to marry when forbidden to do so.... and the priest who helped them.

Would you risk your life to marry? Or... maybe we should put it like this: WHO would you risk your life to marry?