When the Bluestocking Belles first began working on a box set based around a Valentine’s Day Ball in Regency Bath, I had a few question. Was Valentine’s Day celebrated back then? How?
I knew the Victorians had hand written cards, and the Americans in the late 19th century brought in printed cards. And I knew Valentine was a Roman, killed for his faith and remembered for kindness to lovers. I didn’t know much else, but a bit of research soon put that right.
Wild Lupercalia
Long before the fifth century, when the three possible claimants for the story of St Valentine were around, the Romans had a feast in the middle of February that celebrated fertility. It included a ritual in which men killed animals and then used their hides to whip the women who lined up for the opportunity. The proceedings also including a jar full of names to pair men and women up for the duration of the festival – or longer, if they found they liked one another.
Valentine – but which Valentine?
When Christianity became the preferred religion, or so the theory goes, the bishops looked around for a replacement festival; one that wouldn’t involve quite so much blood and sex, but still let people have a good time.
They had a handy day already: 14 February was the feast day of three martyrs, both called Valentine. One was a fellow who refused to convert to paganism and was executed. According to legend, before he died he performed a miracle to heal the daughter of his jailor, and sent her a letter signed ‘from your Valentine’. Not much is known about the third, except that he died in Africa.
The other was a Roman priest who performed weddings for soldiers forbidden to marry, which in time led to the connection between St Valentine and lovers.
Beloved friends
At first, St Valentine’s Day was for celebrating any kind of love by showing affection. However, by the late fourteenth century, the idea of courtly love was in full swing, and the medieval author wrote a poem in which he firmly associated St Valentine and his day with romance.
As the years passed, the tradition developed. Lovers exchanged gifts, poems, letters, and handmade cards to celebrate the feast. Lovelorn suitors might give a Valentine’s Day token to impress the beloved. By the eighteenth century, the association of the saint between the saint and a wider definition of love had disappeared from England. But the association of the day and lovers was going strong, and it was only going to increase in the nineteenth century. In 1815, the year of our Valentine’s Day ball, such an event was entirely possible, and we can certainly expect our characters to keep up the tradition of giving hand-made tokens of affection to the object of their love.
It would be another thirty-five years before a entrepreneurial American woman would create the first print run of Valentine’s Day cards, but our story was feasible, and we were off.
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Valentine’s from Bath releases on Saturday. Only 99 cents for more than 450 pages of stories. See the Belles’ project page for details. The blurb below is from my novella, one of five in the collection.
