A Timeline of Valentine’s Day

February 14, or June 12 in Brazil

A Lykaia festival

B Juno Februa ritual

C Lupercalia rite
U Iran bans Valentine’s Day goods
D Valentine of Terni martyred

E Valentine of Rome martyred V Malaysia arrests Valentine’s

T Saudi Arabia bans sale of Day celebrators
F Valentine of Africa martyred Valentine’s Day items

G Lupercalia abolished S Valentine’s Day deleted

H Valentine’s Day established
R Valentine’s marketed by
I Gate of Saint Valentine American Greetings
Q Lupercalia and Juno Februa confused

K Birds began to pair P Mass production surpasses handwritten

O ‘Roses are red, violets are blew’

J Legenda Aurea N High Court of Love established

biographies M Valentine’s biography romanticized
Saint Valentine

L Chaucer associates Valentine’s

Day with romantic love 52-infographics.blogspot.com
Design by Gareth Parry, data from Wikipedia
20110220 Week #31

A Greece’s Arcadian Lykaia festival centered upon an
ancient threat of cannibalism and the possibility of
a werewolf transformation. An odd beginning for
Valentine’s Day?
B Februa, a spring cleansing ritual held in mid
February, hybridised Arcadian Lykaia with Pan and
Faunus worship.
C Around the 5th century BC, and between February
13 and 15, Ancient Rome practised a fertility rite
known as Lupercalia, which borrowed from Februa and
Lykaian festivals.
D Saint Valentine of Terni, Bishop of Interamna in 197AD,
and one of three Saint’s Valentine; was martyred
between 269–273AD under Emperor Aurelian.
E Saint Valentine of Rome was a priest, martyred in
269AD. Nothing more is known of this Saint Valentine.
F Saint Valentine, martyred in Africa. No further
details known.
G Pope Gelasius I abolished Lupercalia in 496AD.
H Pope Gelasius I established Valentine’s Day in 496AD.
I Porta del Popola was called the Gate of Saint Valentine
in the early 1100AD’s.
J Described in Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend) in
1260AD, and later in Acta Sanctorum between 1643–
1940AD, Saint Valentine was persecuted as a Christian,
interrogated by Emperor Claudius II personally, and
executed after attempting to convert Claudius to
Christianity, because Claudius had attempted to convert
Valentine to Roman Paganism. Before his execution,
Saint Valentine healed the jailer’s daughter of blindness.
K In conventional belief in the United Kingdom and
Ireland, birds began to pair on February 14.
L Valentine’s Day was first associated with romantic love
by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1382AD. Geoffrey wrote ‘for
this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh
there to chose his mate’.
M Some time later, the story was embroidered. Valentine
was imprisoned for breaking a law, attributed to
Claudius II, that ordered young men to remain single.
Saint Valentine performed marriage ceremonies for
young men, breaking that law.
N In 1400AD, Paris establishes the High Court of Love on
February 14, hearing love contracts, betrayals, and cases
of violence against women.
O Edmund Spenser writes ‘roses are red, violets are blew’
in 1590AD.
P By 1797AD, handwritten valentines are overtaken by
mass produced greeting cards.
Q In 1839AD, Alban Butler and Francis Douce confuse
the Ancient Roman Lupercalia festival with the Juno
Februa, and describe Valentine’s Day as ‘names of young
women in a box drawn by men by chance’.
R From 1906AD American Greetings embellished the
story further by claiming that the night before his
execution, Valentine sent the first valentine card to the
jailer’s daughter whom he had healed, reading ‘from
your Valentine’.
S Pope Paul VI deleted Valentine’s Day from the Roman
calendar of Saints in 1969AD, as ‘nothing is known
of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on
February  14’.
T In Saudi Arabia in 2002 and 2008, religious police
banned the sale of Valentine’s Day items.
U In 2011, the Iranian printing works owners union
banned printing or distribution of any goods promoting
Valentine’s Day.
V In 2011, Malaysian religious authorities arrested 100
couples for celebrating Valentine’s Day.