During the third century, there was a pope in Rome named Saint Valentine who was known as the saint of lovers, people with epilepsy, and beekeepers. He was imprisoned by the emperor Aurelius in 272 AD for marrying Christian soldiers against the kings’ knowledge who didn’t want them to marry so they could fight his wars. While being imprisoned the bishop cured his jailer’s daughter of blindness and the pair fell in love with each other.
Others say, that Saint Valentine of Terni, a bishop is the real reason we celebrate the holiday. He was beheaded by the emperor Claudius II outside Rome for trying to convince Claudius to embrace Christianity, after Claudius refused he commanded Valentinus either to leave his faith or he would be killed. At this time Valentine’s Day was yet to be a holiday but had more to do with a poet who wrote about Saint Valentine and the connection with love in one of his poems, in the article The Strange but True Story Behind Valentine’s Day. They wrote “That’s how he created a connection between Saint Valentine and love celebrations. The first written connection between love and Valentine’s Day appears in his poem, Parlement of Foules, written in the late 14th century. He appears to have invented the correlation and chalked it up to poetic license, though it’s also possible he was drawing from older courtly traditions.” This means that the poet who wrote about Saint Valentine in his poetry had to do with people starting to celebrate Valentine’s Day nowadays.
We took the liberty of interviewing couples here at South and we received many heartfelt responses. We interviewed the Heilemann couple, and we asked them how they met. Their response was, “We actually met here at South, we had a mutual attraction towards each other, what set off our relationship was being sent to a conference together where we spent time together at a nearby mall. We saw a live band together at the mall as well.” Their response melted our hearts, we could truly tell they were in love.
To wrap up our article, the information given during the interview made us realize how different things were back then. Soldiers weren’t allowed to love someone or marry someone, unlike us where we have both of those opportunities whenever we want without the fear of being sentenced to death. Many of us take things for granted and can love one another regardless of our differences as people. With this information in mind, we think it’s safe to assume society has come a long way since then, from sentencing soldiers to death to being able to marry the man or woman of your dreams.
