Marriage and Beyond

Read: The Origin of Valentine’s Day, Part 1 of 2

The second lore is one of the more interesting origin of Valentine’s Day. It starts with the Bishop of Terni in Italy. He was martyred in the year 270. The story goes that when the Roman emperor ordered that soldiers should never marry, Valentine refused to obey and went on to perform secret weddings for those in the army. He was then imprisoned for that crime. While he was then in prison, he fell in love with the daughter of the jailor. And before he was set out to be beheaded, he left a love note for his beloved and was signed, “Your Valentine”.

Even as the story was passed from generation to generation, Valentine was then seen as the spirit of true love. In the middle ages, the custom continued of young men and women receiving by lot his or her “Valentine” for the coming year. This is mentioned in Chaucer and Shakespeare. In some cases, choosing a partner by lot is a serious business, which eventually leads to marriage. While in some cases, it’s no more than a game. There used to be a popular belief that the first man to be seen by a woman on February fourteen had to be her Valentine, without objections from either party.

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