| 'Lupa Capitolina' from History of Rome by Henry Liddell (1860). Illustration by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson. |
The clue lies in the festival’s full name: Saint Valentine’s Day. Valentinius, to give him his proper name, was a third century Roman martyr about whom so little is accurately known that in 1969 the Vatican demoted him off the General Roman Calendar, effectively consigning him to the reserves bench of dodgy and knock-kneed saints.
At what point Christians began observing Saint Valentine’s Day on February 14 is uncertain. But, as Christianity waxed in the early centuries of the current era, this festival provided a handy coat-peg on which to hang one of those thoroughly earthy pagan revels that the church detested: the Lupercalian festivals that celebrated the suckling of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, by the she-wolf Lupa.
Writing in The Mythology of Sex, Sarah Dening describes the Lupercalian revels thus: “male goats were sacrificed, young men were touched with their blood, and priests wearing raw goatskins would strike with a strip of goatskin the hands of a woman who wanted to conceive.” In this riveting melange of sex and stupidity we can also perceive the origins of the X-Factor and Celebrity Big Brother shows.
These festivals occurred in mid-February, the month sacred to Juno Februata, the goddess of purifying sex. Dening continues: “Then men and women exchanged clothing and indulged in orgiastic sex. The men chose their partners by drawing Small Pieces of paper on which were written the names of the women present.”
As the Lupercalia became the Christian Saint Valentine’s Day, the small pieces of paper morphed into medieval love notes and latter day Valentine cards. The festival did not shed its overtly sexual connotations until the High Middle Ages and Geoffrey Chaucer’s idealisation of romantic love.
Just remember that, dear ladies, the next time you receive a card from Cupid. In times gone by it would have been your marching orders to report for sex with a randomly-chosen priest who stank of dead goat. Please appreciate your over-priced roses.
Just remember that, dear ladies, the next time you receive a card from Cupid. In times gone by it would have been your marching orders to report for sex with a randomly-chosen priest who stank of dead goat. Please appreciate your over-priced roses.
