Every year on February 14, millions of people celebrate Valentine’s Day. This day is associated with sweets, flowers, candlelit meals and romantic music. But behind the pink image of Valentine, there is a mysterious – and horrific – story of beheading and scattering of limbs across Europe.
The -Clergyman in the Roman Empire- Saint Valentine was executed in the third century on February 14, because he is believed to have violated the Roman prohibition on marriage. A church in Dublin now claims to have the saint’s heart in its exhibits. His supposed skull is on display in a Basilica (church) in Rome, his skeleton is in a gold box in a Glasgow convent, his shoulder is a landmark in a Prague Basilica and his remains are boxed in glass in a church in Madrid .
Then there is Terni in central Italy, the famous city of Valentine. There his remains attract the faithful to the Basilica of St. Valentine, the oldest construction of which is supposed to have been built over his tomb. Overall, a large number of catholic churches in Europe claim ownership of the relics of this famous saint. However, it is not clear where his real remains are.
This lack of consensus underscores the depth of the mysteries surrounding Valentine. Its history is so vague that, despite being a recognized saint, it was deleted from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 – the liturgical almanac that identifies saints’ dates – due to a lack of reliable information about his life.
Who was Valentine?
His legend is rather a mixture of the lives of many Italian priests named Valentinos, none of whom have actually inspired the annual Valentine’s celebration. Historical records show that three saints named Valentini died on February 14 during the third century, with little information about anyone, according to Lisa Bittel, a professor of religion and history at the University of Southern California and one of the leading specialists in valentine.
One of these Valentines was lost in Africa. Another was a priest beheaded by the Roman emperor Claudius Gothic. The third was a bishop of Terni who was also beheaded by Gothic. However, it seems unlikely that both Valentines were beheaded. Most likely, this horrific incident “was just a legend that” broke “in two,” says Beatle. Also, there is no evidence that any of these saints did acts that promoted romanticism. Instead, February 14th began as a religious holiday that marked the execution of Valentine.
The first mention of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love was made more than a thousand years later by British author Jeffrey Chaucer, according to Henry Kelly, a professor of history and theology at UCLA. Kelly says that Chaucer’s writing stimulated the tradition of lovers to celebrate this annual celebration.
Given all this uncertainty, it is understandable that many European sites claim ownership of Valentine’s remains. Churches benefit greatly from any particular connection to a saint, Bittel explains. “The more famous the saint is, the more believers come to worship him,” he says. “It was easy to rewrite the hagiography to include the presence of the saint in a specific place.”
Although not all Valentine’s relics appear to be in possession, there is no rivalry or animosity between these churches, Beatle adds. And the Roman Catholic Church does not talk about it at all.
“The Vatican is not taking a stand on the stage,” he said. “The church leadership almost let the acquisition and use of the relics continue without much regulation. He brought customers to the churches, pilgrims to the city and money to the church benches. Theologians and others have been critical of the relic trade from the beginning, starting with St. Augustine, if not earlier. People knew that the relic traders were “selling” lies. “But people were also willing to believe that the saints could provide relics in miraculous quantities, so that many churches could claim to have the body of a particular saint.”
The strange case of Valentine
Today, however, Valentine’s relics “magnetize” much less. In Rome, crowds of foreign visitors line up every day in the sixth-century Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. There, in a gilded box, there is a skull decorated with a wreath of flowers. However, these tourist queues are either uninterested or unaware of this Valentine’s relic. Instead, they visit the church to place the fingers of their hand in the mouth of an old mask that is famous for exposing liars and is called the Mouth of Truth.
In Glasgow, the clergy’s bones arrived in the late 1870s, according to Father George Smalsky of the Duns Scotus convent. They were donated by a wealthy French Catholic family and are now housed in an ornate reliquary behind glass at the entrance to the monastery atrium.
In the west, across the wild sea of ​​Ireland, Valentine has to compete with an equally famous saint. One of Dublin’s main attractions is the majestic cathedral, named after the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, and is full of visitors all year round.
Nearby, inside the less impressive Whitefriar Street church, St. Valentine is relatively anonymous. Under a large statue of the saint there is a wooden chest containing his heart. In 1836, this sacred organ was transported from Rome in a “solemn procession”, according to a sign inside the church.
Alan Byrne, a Dublin tour guide with a degree in history and a dissertation on the Catholic Church, says Valentine’s relics are well known to locals but absent from the city’s tourist itinerary. He states that the only time the relics receive many visitors is on Valentine’s Day. “People write love messages and leave them in the reliquary,” says Byrne. “Newly engaged couples often bless their rings there. Occasionally, there are even marriage proposals. ” But on February 14, people are more likely to post a Valentine’s emoji online than to visit the holy man’s heart — or skull or shoulder.
Daily with information from National Geographic
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