The Lupercalia Festival developed into a time of promising fertility and easy childbirth. Another aspect of the festival was for the single women to place their name in the large urn. After all the names were placed, the single men of Rome would draw a name of a woman who would then be paired together for one year. The selection would often resulted in marriage. February 14th was degreed as Valentine’s Day by Pope Gelasius in 498 in honor of Saint Valentine who was martyred for marrying Roman soldiers secretly.
Several legends of who Saint Valentine was have survived to today. One legend has St. Valentine as a priest who married Roman soldiers against a degree from the Emperor Claudius II. Claudius II felt single soldiers would be better fighters than whose with families. Valentine went against the emperor’s degree married young lovers. Once Claudius found out about Valentine’s activities a warrant was issued. While awaiting execution two stories developed. The first was that Valentine fell in love with a jailers daughter which the day of his execution he sent a note and signed it “from your Valentine”. The second story tells how people would leave messages in the cracks in the wall for Valentine to read and he would offer prayers for them.
From both the Pagan Rome and Christian holidays a very basic human desire has continued to be addressed, that of finding a special person to share a life together with. It has developed for one day to allows those we care about to be told. Though the date of St. Valentine’s Day may have been moved to “Christianize” a pagan fertility festival the basic message and meaning has survived.
COMMENTARY:
I found the research for the Valentine’s Day Challenge to be generally easy. Wikipedia and the History Channel’s website were the two sources I used proved to be informative and agreed with most of the information presented as fact. One issue I did encounter was with the History Channel's website, the information was very basic and unlike Wikipedia the site did not provide a means to link with important terms and concepts.
From the readings for this week I approached the assignment with a degree of mistrust of the free websites. After reading through the articles from both of the sites I found the facts did match up with several stories I have heard over the years of St. Valentine’s Day origins. I chose these sites, based on a very technical search using Google searching “history of Valentine’s Day”. The History Channel and Wikipedia were the both one of the top returns. Once I selected both I tabbed between the pages to compare and contrast them.
Wikipedia provided the means to dig deeper into the Lupercalia Festival origins by clicking on the hyper link. I was able to get a more specific explanation of the festival. The History Channel site was simple a text page with no hype links of terms. Though for what I was basing the assignment on the History Channel page proved to be more helpful with linking the Lupercalia Festival to St. Valentine’s Day.
The challenge was interesting and has made me more aware of the potential downfalls of open edit sites. Sites such as Wikipedia and the History channel are good for a basis of research but should not comprise the majority of ones citations. All the “facts” should be double checked with online sites were peer reviews are the norm and that the individuals who present the research are traceable. Though the e-democratic ideal that is foundation of the Wiki movement is a good idea, unregulated information presented as facts with no tests is as dangerous in the virtual world as in the real one.
