Happy Valentine's Day

Although Valentine's Day has been rendered into another one of those mushy holidays, it does have religious and cultural gravitas.

Here is some background:

St. Valentine's Day began as a liturgical celebration of one or more early Christian saints named Valentinus. The most popular martyrology associated with Saint Valentine was that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire; during his imprisonment, he is said to have healed the daughter of his jailer Asterius. Legend states that before his execution he wrote her a letter "from your Valentine" as a farewell. Today, Saint Valentine's Day is an official feast day in the Anglican Communion, as well as in the Lutheran Church.[8] The Eastern Orthodox Church also celebrates Saint Valentine's Day, albeit on July 6th and July 30th, the former date in honor of the Roman presbyter Saint Valentine, and the latter date in honor of Hieromartyr Valentine, the Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni).

The day was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. By the 15th century, it had evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). Valentine's Day symbols that are used today include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards...

The celebration of Saint Valentine did not have any romantic connotations until Chaucer's poetry about "Valentines" in the 14th century.

There are differing opinions if Chaucer did indeed initiate Valentine's Day as a day for romantic love. His poem Parlement of Foules (1382) with these lines:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.

does suggest a more romantic affiliation for Valentine's, and later on the Middle Ages introduced the lofty courtly love.

John Donne merges the religious with the romantic in 1633 with his:

"An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth
and Count Palatine Being Married on St. Valentine's Day":

Hayle Bishop Valentine whose day this is
All the Ayre is thy Diocese
And all the chirping Queristers
And other birds ar thy parishioners
Thou marryest every yeare
The Lyrick Lark, and the graue whispering Doue,
The Sparrow that neglects his life for loue,
The houshold bird with the redd stomacher
Thou makst the Blackbird speede as soone,
As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halcyon
The Husband Cock lookes out and soone is spedd
And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine
This day which might inflame thy selfe old Valentine.

The Victorian's introduced the Valentine's Day as a popular card-giving holiday of romantic expression.

Below is a strangely (for our modern sentiments) formal card. Yet, it fits the Victorian restraint, a character trait which our era has forgotten. And, it is far better than the versions that in card stores these days.



Shopping for a card these days. No inspiration, no beauty.


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Post By: Kidist P. Asrat