Lupercalia: Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day

Ectomo’s crusty, drunken Uncle Ellis pointed out in his Bad Signal email that today is, indeed, Valentine’s Day, that horrid celebration, seemingly designed by a shadowy syndicate of florists, chocolatiers, and greeting card manufacturers for the sole purpose of peddling their normally over-priced wares at an even greater profit margin. However, it is worth pointing out that, like most Christian holidays, Valentine’s Day occupies the date of an earlier, pagan holiday and, like many pagan holidays it consisted of the usual, heathen tropes, i.e.: costumes, drinking, sacrifice, and a focus on fertility.

The festival, celebrated traditionally on the 15th of February, was begun in a sacred grove, purported to be the place where the She-Wolf nursed Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus. Here, priests of the god Lupercus (although there seems to be debate as to which god, exactly, was honored), clothed in goat skins, sacrificed goats and young dogs, both selected because of their “strong sexual instincts.” After the sacrifice, two nude, male youths were led to the altar to have their foreheads blessed with the blood and milk of the victims. During this blessing the youths were required to laugh and smile. Next came a feast with the aforementioned drinking and then the young men clothed themselves in the skins of the sacrificial animals and cut thongs from them. They then ran through the streets flagellating all who came near. Young women and matrons were encouraged to offer their bare backs up for a flogging in order to ensure their fertility.

Contrary to what one may think, the opportunity to run, naked through the city was a distinction of great importance. Marc Antony was himself, once a Luperci and under Augustus admission into the order was given as a symbol honor to those of “equestrian rank.” It was during the 5th century that the tradition fell out of favor with the upper class, becoming the lewd festival of commoners, leading Pope Gelasius I to remark, in his letter to Andromachus, “If you assert that this rite has salutary force, celebrate it yourselves in the ancestral fashion; run nude yourselves that you may properly carry out the mockery!” Needless to say, no one was up for it.

The exact connection between Lupercalia and the Chritian holiday is a bit murky. The Reverend Alban Butler in his book Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints published between 1756 and 1759 mentions the holiday of “Juno Februata” under the heading of February 14th, writing:

To abolish the heathens lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls, in honour of their goddess Februata Juno, on the fifteenth of this month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets, given on this day.

These aspects, taken from Lupercalia, would be further embellished by later writers, leading to the Valentine’s Day/ romance connection. However, scholars have noted that no such connection exists until Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem Parlement of Foules, which contains the lines:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese [choose] his make [mate].

The Valentine that Chaucer was referring to was a bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307 and whose day was May 2nd, although people assumed it to be one of two Valentines — one of Rome and one of Terni, who died in AD 269 and AD 197 respectively — whose days were February 14th, providing a very anachronistic time for the mating of birds. It is interesting to note that the Catholic Church recognized eleven Valentines at various times.

The Catholic Church formally disowned “Valentine’s Day” in 1969 when it revised its calender saying:

Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on 14 February.

In doing so they seem to have brought the whole sordid tale full circle, in effect, throwing the holiday back to the wolves.

The Lupercalia in the Fifth Century [Bill Thayer]