When in Rome...!

A Long, Long Time Ago

What we now call Valentine's Day has its origins in the fourth century B.C. Back then, the Romans engaged in an annual young man's rite to passage to the God Lupercus. The names of the teenage women were placed in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus, a man was assigned a woman companion for the duration of the year, after which another lottery was staged.

After eight hundred years of this cruel practice, the early church fathers sought to end this practice... They found an answer in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years earlier.According to church tradition St. Valentine was a priest near Rome in about the year 270 A.D. At that time the Roman Emperor Claudius-II who had issued an edict forbidding marriage.

This was around when the heyday of Roman empire had almost come to an end. Lack of quality administrators led to frequent civil strife. Learning declined, taxation increased, and trade slumped to a low, precarious level. And the Gauls, Slavs, Huns, Turks and Mongolians from Northern Europe and Asian increased their pressure on the empire's boundaries. The empire was grown too large to be shielded from external aggression and internal chaos with existing forces.

Thus more of capable men were required to be recruited as soldiers and officers. When Claudius became the emperor, he felt that married men were more emotionally attached to their families, and thus, will not make good soldiers. So to assure quality soldiers, he banned marriage.Valentine, a bishop , seeing the trauma of young lovers, met them in a secret place, and joined them in the sacrament of matrimony.

Claudius learned of this "friend of lovers," and had him arrested. The emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the roman gods, to save him from certain execution. Valentine refused to recognize Roman Gods and even attempted to convert the emperor, knowing the consequences fully.On February 24, 270, Valentine was executed.