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| Lupercalia image from the Univ. of Washington |
In 1756, a Roman Catholic Priest named Alban Butler published the
first of four volumes titled The Lives of
the Fathers, Martyrs and other Principal Saints (generally shortened to Lives of the Saints), in which he wrote,
“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
[February], several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets
[tickets or tags], given on this day.”
This claim was embellished further by English antiquarian Francis
Douce in 1807, who stated that the custom of drawing names was a feature of the
Roman holiday of Lupercalia, and that Lupercalia is the origin of the
pairing-up customs we associate with Valentine’s Day.
In a 1916 article in the folkore journal The Lotus, the supposed pagan origin of Valentine’s Day is offered
as a given.
“There is no surpise in being told that St. Valentine’s day is the
Christianized form of the classic Lupercalia, which were feasts held in Rome
during the month of February in honour of Pan and Juno and known as Juno
Februata. Among other ceremonies it was customary to put the names of young
women in a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The
Christian clergy, finding it difficult to extirpate the pagan practice, strove
to give it a religious aspect by substituting names of particular saints for
those of women.”
The drawing of saints’ names was supposed to inspire an imitation
of said saint’s virtues throughout the following year. That some clergy
actually did this at some point in time would not surprise me, but it was not
part of any early adaptation of a pagan practice.
Nowadays, you will find many sources on the Web stating with an
air of certainty and authority that the “real” origin of Valentine’s Day is the
Lupercalia.
No. It isn’t.
Prof. Oruch, whose research tracing Valentine traditions to
Chaucer was explained in an earlier post (see also source below), found no pagan/Lupercalia
link to the holiday, and points to Butler and Douce as the sole sources of this
myth.
About Butler’s Lives of the
Saints, Oruch wrote, “Butler’s ideas were prompted, in all probability, by
a confused knowledge of the date of this isolated event; a less charitable
explanation would attribute his remarks to wishful or pious fantasy.”
And as for Douce’s Lupercalia connection, scholarly works such as
“Some Notes on the Lupercalia,” by E. Sachs (source below), describe the
holiday’s customs as involving young men running half-naked through the streets
of Rome whacking people with strips of animal skin. None of the surviving
eyewitness accounts (the festival continued into the 5th century) say anything
about the drawing of names or any sort of pairing up.
The origin of the Lupercalia is itself quite murky, as is its
conflation with the purification feast of Februa, which lent its name to the
month. Even in Roman times, contemporary observers such as Plutarch (45–120 CE)
were not sure when the Lupercalia, which took place on 15 February, got
started.
History prof. John A. North, University College of London, and classics prof. Neil McLynn, Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, describe the origin and history of the Lupercalia
something like this:
The festival probably began as a religious ritual sometimes
referred to as Caesar’s Carnival, commemorating Rome’s founding legend (the
name being related to lupus, Latin for wolf), and
involving the sacrifice of a goat or goats, after which young men wearing the
skins of the sacrificed animals ran through the streets carrying strips of the
skins and hitting people with them. At some point, the custom became associated with a fertility
ritual, and women would hold out their hands to be struck by the skins to
ensure their own fertility.
The event morphed during Roman times into a kind of street
theater, its exact purpose not entirely clear, except maybe for unruly youth to
let off steam. It was still associated with the idea of conferring fertility,
and infused with erotic overtones, if you know what I mean. Some accounts say
that women were beaten, but it appears that it was much more benign and playful
(in a bawdy sort of way) and consensual than that.
In the fifth century, Pope Gelasius banned the festival, though it
is often said that he “converted” it to the Feast of the Purification, or
Candlemas, which takes place on 2 February (40 days after Christmas). Whether
the Christian Feast of the Purification is adapted from or influenced by the
Roman Februa is a separate matter and not one I plan to address in the context
of Valentine’s Day, but it’s clear that Pope Gelasius had no interest in
“converting” pagan holidays; he banned them.
I will take a more general look at the implications of February’s
place on the calendar at the midway point between the winter solstice and the
spring equinox, and how that likely influenced the holidays we mark during this
month, in my final post in this series.
Next up, some early Valentine customs in 15th century England.
• • • • • • •
Sources
[author
unknown] “Madame Valentine.” The Lotus
Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 5 (Feb. 1916), pp. 234-238. (Accessed from JSTOR
database via Hennepin County Library.)
Green,
William M. “The Lupercalia in the Fifth Century.” Classical Philology. Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan. 1931), pp. 60-69. An online article from the U Chicago.
North,
J.A., and McLynn, Neil. “Postscript to the Lupercalia: from Caesar to
Andromachus.” The Journal of Roman
Studies. Vol. 98 (2008), pp. 176-181. (Accessed from JSTOR database via
Hennepin County Library.)
Oruch,
Jack. B. "St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February." Speculum,
Vol. 56, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 534–565. (Accessed from JSTOR database via
Hennepin County Library.)
Sachs, E.
“Some Notes on the Lupercalia.” The
American Journal of Philology. Vol. 84, No. 3 (July 1963), pp. 266-279. (Accessed
from JSTOR database via Hennepin County Library.)
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