Little is known of St Valentine, whose feast day is celebrated today. It doesn’t help that there are three of them! It’s generally accepted that the association of St Valentine with love was an attempt by the early Christian church to take over pagan festivals such as the Roman Lupercalia and the Greek Gamelion - both associated with sex, love and fertility. In Greece, the festival celebrated the marriage of Zeus to Hera. In the Middle Ages, it was widely believed that birds chose their mates in mid-February, and in 1381 Chaucer wrote a poem The Parliament of Fowls, to commemorate the engagement of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia. The poem includes the lines: XXXFor this was sent of Saint Valentine’s day,
XXXWhen every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.
It’s possible that this is the origin of the more specific tradition of declaring ones love on St Valentine’s Day.
