Marriage

This Is Why Valentine, Weddings And Romance Are Unavoidably Intertwined

Valentine's Day 2019

Whoop! We are already in the second month of the new year Time flies yeah?

Well, Valentine’s around the corner and whilst you are busy making plans and thinking of what gifts to buy for your loved ones and significant other, we are here to keep you in the know (all in the spirit of love, of course).

Here’s why St Valentine’s day has always been marked as the day of lovers and it has a lot to do with weddings than we probably may have known;

Although there is a lot of inconsistency in the identification of the saint who is replicated in various stories. One account states that a popularly ascribed hagiographical identity appears in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). Alongside a woodcut portrait of Valentine, the text states that he was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius Gothicus.

He was arrested and imprisoned upon being caught marrying Christian couples and otherwise aiding Christians who were at the time being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Helping Christians at this time was considered a crime. Claudius took a liking to this prisoner. However, when Valentinus tried to convert the Emperor, he was condemned to death.

He was beaten with clubs and stones; when that failed to kill him, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate. Various dates are given for the martyrdom or martyrdoms: 269, 270, or 273 AD.

One is that in the 3rd century AD, Valentine, who was a priest, defied the order of the emperor Claudius and secretly performed Christian weddings for couples so that the husbands wouldn’t have to go to war. The legend claims that soldiers were sparse at this time so was a big inconvenience to the emperor. The account mentions that in order “to remind these men of their vows and God’s love, Saint Valentine is said to have cut hearts from parchment”, giving them to these soldiers and persecuted Christians, a possible origin of the widespread use of hearts on St. Valentine’s Day.

Another account is that Valentine refused to sacrifice to pagan gods. Being imprisoned for this, Valentine gave his testimony in prison and through his prayers healed the jailer’s daughter who was suffering from blindness. On the day of his execution, he left her a note that was signed, “Your Valentine”

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