St. Valentine
There really was a Valentine. The cards came fourteen hundred years later.
Under the emperor Claudius it became illegal for young men to marry, on the theory that single soldiers fight harder. Valentine was a priest in Rome, and he kept marrying them anyway, quietly, in small rooms.
He was arrested for it. The story says that while he was in prison he became friends with the jailer's daughter, who was blind, and that she could see by the time he died.
The last thing he is supposed to have sent her was a note signed from your Valentine. Historians will tell you, correctly, that we know very little about him for certain. But the phrase is still going, on about a hundred and forty million cards a year.
St. Valentine facts for kids
- He's the patron saint of beekeepers, which nobody can fully explain
- The heart-and-card tradition starts with Chaucer in the 1300s, not with him
- There may have been two or even three different Valentines who got merged into one
- He's also the patron of people with epilepsy
Feast day: February 14 · Patron of engaged couples and beekeepers
Removed from the universal calendar in 1969 because so little about him is certain. He is still a saint, and February 14 is still his day.
St. Valentine, help me love the people around me on the ordinary days too.