In the year 270, Marcus Aurelius Claudius Gothicus was the Emperor of Rome. Claudius (or Aurelius, as he was sometimes called) was distinguished for brilliant military service before he assumed the highest in Rome. During his short two year term as Emperor he won further victories in Northern Italy and in Dardania.

It is in connection with these military campaigns that our young Father Valentine enters the picture.

The Emperor Claudius needed men in his armies, and he needed them fast. He sent officers out into the streets to recruit as many young men as possible. The recruiting wasn't going so well, however, because many young men discovered that they could easily avoid the "draft" by quickly getting married. When this was reported to the Emperor, he countered by proclaiming a ban on marriages until after the military campaigns were finished. Young Father Valentine enters the picture when he decides to challenge the Emperor's ban and perform marriages secretly. Of course, he was arrested and imprisoned.

During Father Valentine's imprisonment, so the legend goes, he was befriended by the jailer's daughter, and he would write notes to her that he signed, "From Your Valentine."

Eventually, Father Valentine was beheaded in prison and later proclaimed a Saint. It is his martyrdom that is officially celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on February 14.

February takes its name from febra, objects that are supposed to ward off evil influences and purify things. One might consider a rabbit's foot or the placement of a horseshoe over a doorway as febra. In ancient Rome, the latter part of January and all of February was given over to rites to avoid harm to the next year's crops and work. One might relate these rites to various New Year's resolutions.

From February 13th to the 21st marriages were forbidden and magistrates did not wear their insignia of office. The lupercalia took place on February 15th. One or more goats or dogs were sacrificed. girdles (large belts) were made of the skins and worn by young men who ran about the boundary of the Palatine settlement, striking those whom they met with strips of goat skin. This act supposedly provided for fertility and purification. Shakespeare mentions this ceremony as the time when, a month before Caesar's assassination, Mark Antony had offered him a crown.The feast of Lupercalia, the days before and after, seem connected to the story of Romulus and Remus who were said to have been cared for by a wolf in a cave by the Palatine. This festival also acted as a pattern for the European Carnival which ends with Shrove Tuesday.

On the 22nd was the festival of Parentalia, when dead members of families were especially remembered. Each family had an altar to the Lares and Penates...the household gods. The Lars familiaris- one to a family- was specially dressed and served food. how one served food to an inanimate object is a bit puzzling but it could be equated with feeding a doll.

There was no Valentine's Day, but all its features came from the Greeks and Romans. With the roman love-poets, every day was Valentine's Day. Propertius, one of these, wrote, "Whoever he was who painted Cupid as a boy, don't you think he was a real artist? He first saw that lovers are foolish and waste much money on passing fancies. And he wasn't far off in adding airy wings and representing the god as flying from the human heart, since of course we are tossed back and forth in love's fickle breeze. And no wonder he was armed with barbed arrows..no one gets off safe from that wound."

Though the Romans didn't celebrate Valentine's Day, we doubt the historians will take affront if you wish to create your own Latin celebration.