For first married valentine’s day gift holiday, see Valentine’s Day. For the Canadian city, see Saint-Valentin, Quebec.
Relics of him were kept in the Church and Catacombs of San Valentino in Rome, which “remained an important pilgrim site throughout the Middle Ages until the relics of St. Saint Valentine is commemorated in the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Churches on February 14. Saint Valentine does not occur in the earliest list of Roman martyrs, the Chronography of 354, although the patron of the Chronography’s compilation was a wealthy Roman Christian named Valentinus. The Catholic Encyclopedia and other hagiographical sources speak of three Saints Valentine that appear in connection with February 14.
Though the extant accounts of the martyrdoms of the first two listed saints are of a late date and contain legendary elements, “a common nucleus of fact” may underlie the two accounts and they may refer to “a single person”. The Roman Martyrology, the Catholic Church’s official list of recognized saints, for February 14 gives only one Saint Valentine: a martyr who died on the Via Flaminia. About eleven other saints having the name Valentine are commemorated in the Roman Catholic Church. Some Eastern Churches of the Western rite may provide still other different lists of Saint Valentines. The inconsistency in the identification of the saint is replicated in the various vitae that are ascribed to him.
A common hagiography describes Saint Valentine as a priest of Rome or as the former Bishop of Terni, an important town of Umbria, in central Italy. Saint Valentine is said to have ministered to the faithful amidst the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. An embellishment to this account states that before his execution, Saint Valentine wrote a note to Asterius’s daughter signed “from your Valentine”, which is said to have “inspired today’s romantic missives”. The Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, compiled about 1260 and one of the most-read books of the High Middle Ages, gives sufficient details of the saints for each day of the liturgical year to inspire a homily on each occasion. Alongside a woodcut portrait of Valentine, the text states that he was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius Gothicus. There are many other legends behind Saint Valentine. One is that in the 3rd century AD it is said that Valentine, who was a priest, defied the order of the emperor Claudius and secretly performed Christian weddings for couples, allowing the husbands involved to escape conscription into the pagan army.
There are many churches dedicated to Saint Valentine in countries such as Italy. Saint Valentine was venerated no more than other Christian martyrs and saints. A 5th- or 6th-century work called Passio Marii et Marthae made up a legend about Saint Valentine’s Basilica being dedicated to Saint Valentine in Rome. Valentini extra Portam on top of his sepulchre, in the Via Flaminia.
