WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Cloud of Witnesses: St. Valentine

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Join Dominic and Marc as they walk through the life (or lives?) of St. Valentine. 

Welcome back to Cloud of Witnesses, where we bring you the stories of the saints who helped shape the church. This week, we have a special episode on St. Valentine. You know, thematic, this upcoming Saturday is St. Valentine's Day. And we thought it would be fun to sort of give our listeners a little history of the feast day. I'm Dominic Toronto. Yes. Oh, you're. I'm Dominic Toronto.

And I'm Mark Ayers. Oh, my bad. I'm Dominic Toronto And I'm Mark Ayers And today we I'm never said that here Okay Here I'll say

And I'm Mark Ayers And Dom St. Valentine is a pretty interesting character Yeah he really is We've got This is going to be

A little bit of a different episode Just sort of structurally St. Valentine didn't leave behind any writings What he did leave behind Are chocolates and love notes That's true Exactly yes

not only did he leave that behind, he left behind potentially two lives? At least two, potentially three. So according to the early martiologies, we have at least three different St. Valentine's. All of them are martyrs. One of them was a priest in Rome. The second one was a bishop of Interamna, which is now Turney, Italy. And the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman Prover. of Africa. The third one, we do actually have some decent evidence to think that's not our

St. Valentine. The first two, the priest in Rome and the bishop, are potentially the same person. Okay. But it's interesting because we do have several different accounts, several different legends. We cannot wait to dive into it. Yeah. So without further ado, let's get right into it. So Mark, tell us a little bit about our saint today who's, you know, lived a double life. Absolutely. So we have a general idea that St. Valentine was born around the year 225 somewhere near Turney in Italy, modern day Italy. Sorry. We do have a general idea that St. Valentine was born sometime around the year 225 in what is today Turney, Italy. He died around the year, he died around the year 270, potentially 269.

We have several main stories around how he was martyred. We don't know very much about his life as a bishop. We don't know very much about his personal life. But we do know the story of how he was persecuted. There are two main narratives. I'll get into the first one. Yeah. So the first main narrative describes St. Valentine as either a priest or a bishop of tourney.

It's slightly unclear. but it gives a little more indication that he was probably a bishop. While under the house arrest, during the reign of Emperor Claudius, during the reign of Emperor Claudius, St. Valentine, or as he would have been known then, Valentus. Valentinus. Or as he would have been known then, Valentinus,

was placed under house arrest for evangelizing to the Roman citizens. He was placed under the house arrest of one judge Asterius, and while discussing his faith with the judge, Valentinus was discussing the validity of Jesus. The judge decided to put him to the test and brought before him his blind daughter and said, if you can heal my daughter, I will believe you. Okay.

Valentinus. Sorry. Yeah. What happened after that? Was he able to do anything with his judge's blind daughter? No, he absolutely was. Valentine's, according to the legend, placed his hands on the blind daughter's eyes, prayed to God, and she was miraculously healed.

Okay. After that, the judge destroyed all of the idols in his house, fasted for three days with his entire household, which at the time, remember, this is his family, this is his extended family, probably, this is all of his servants. Yeah. A lot of people. They all became baptized. All of the other Christian inmates who the judge was holding under arrest were all freed,

and the judge, his family, and the 44-member household of adult family members and servants were all baptized. Oh, wow. Valentinus was later arrested again for continuing to evangelize. He was sent to the prefect of Rome, Claudius II. Sorry. He was sent to the prefect of Rome, the Emperor Claudius II. Claudius apparently took a liking to him until he tried to convince Claudius to embrace Christianity.

Claudius refused, and he condemned Valentinus to. death, he commanded that Valentine's either renounce his faith or be beaten with clubs and executed by beheading. Oh, geez. Valentinus, of course, refused. And according to the legend, he was executed outside the Flamian Gate on February 14, 269, by beheading. Okay.

Wow, that's a pretty, uh, pretty intense. It is pretty intense. But there is a note that right before he died, he sent a letter to the blind daughter who he healed, and he signed it from. your Valentine, which is said to have inspired today's Valentine's Day gifts and writing notes to your beloved one. Interesting. Okay. So that's St. Valentine, the Bishop of Turney. That's right. What about St. Valentine the priest in Rome? Well, that's the second story that I have. So there is a second narrative as to how Valentine was. Sorry. There is a second narrative as to

what exactly caused Valentine to be captured and imprisoned by the Romans. So Claudius II, otherwise known as Claudius the Cruel, was an emperor who was involved in very many military campaigns. It was apparently very bloody. He had to maintain a strong army in order to support all of these military expeditions. But he was having a difficult time getting enough soldiers to actually support this army. Now it was his belief that soldiers weren't joining the military because instead they would rather have families and get married and start a life as civilians. Yeah. And so as emperor, he decided, oh, I know the solution.

I will ban all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, he defied Claudius and he continued to perform marriages in secret for young lovers, which also plays into the love trip. Yeah, exactly. that his feast day now has. When his actions were discovered, Claudius ordered the priest to be put to death. He was arrested, dragged before the prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs

and have his head cut off. Sentence was carried out on February 14th, on or about the year 270. So both accounts do agree on the date and roughly the year, which leads us to believe that this was about the same person. Yeah, I was about to ask, is there any sort of evidence within those two stories that this is in fact the same person?

It's highly likely. It's unclear why in the early martyrologies there are three different Valentine's mentioned or more specifically why the Valentine priest of Rome and the Valentine Bishop of Turney were separated in the martyrology. It is a possibility that that was a slight oversight that he was at one point a priest

and became a bishop later in his life. Both stories mentioned the farewell note for the jailer's daughter. Okay. Sorry. Both stories mention the farewell note for the daughter,

except in this story, the person he heals is not his judge, but rather the jailer. Okay. Slightly different. Yeah. But yes, it appears that the priest Valentine

and the bishop Valentine may have indeed been the same person. Okay. That's, yeah, that's really cool. I had, I, I, I did not realize that until I was doing research for this episode. Oh yeah, I'd never heard that before. Yeah, I mean, I knew, I had heard stories about, you know, healing, healing the, the blind daughter, about marrying couples in secret. But I didn't realize that they were sort of associated with two different people who are actually maybe the same person.

And it may be, you know, those stories are so closely connected. It may be that they're just two halves of the same story. Yeah, exactly. He was indeed marrying young couples and then was arrested by not a jailer but by a judge and who then was his jailer of a certain sort for a time. So it is very possible that in fact this is a simple historiographical error. That in fact this is a simple historiographical. Historiographical. So it is very possible that this is in fact just a simple historiographical error and that these are in fact the same person.

Interesting. Yeah, that's, again, like this is, you know, one of the things that I sort of was expecting and hoping that I would get out of this show was, you know, finding cool stuff like that out about various saints to sort of have their own mystique and sort of aura about them, but we don't actually know a lot about them, you know. No, and it's so interesting with these early Roman martyrs, almost all that we know about them is the story of their martyrdom. We don't know about his family.

We don't know, with some exceptions, like, for instance, Augustus, in, but those people wrote lots about their own life. Yeah. And, you know, for most of these early Roman and, sorry, but for most of these early Christian martyrs, it was, you know, they only became known after they were known as a bishop. Yeah, exactly. All right, so I'm going to just go a little bit into sort of the dating of St. Valentine's Feast Day. So in the West, he is celebrated, as we all know, on February 14th. The Eastern Orthodox celebrate him on July 9th and on July 30th.

Maybe sort of a nod to the fact that there might have been two Saints Valentine. He's only celebrated by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Eastern Orthodox. So like, you know, the Assyrian Church, the East doesn't, the Coptics, the Ethiopian Orthodox. all those other sort of groups don't really celebrate St. Valentine. In 1969, I found this interesting. I didn't realize that this had happened. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed him from the general Roman calendar. They still left it to sort of the local calendars to celebrate it,

and they sort of encouraged that. But the official Roman calendar on February 14th is the Feast of St. Cyril and Methodius. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And nod to the Slavic countries. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I thought that was really cool.

But, you know, by that time, sort of Valentine's Day had already sort of grown to have a weight of its own sort of outside the religious. Sure, maybe more secular tent to it. Exactly, yeah. And you guys may be asking, how did, you know, St. Valentine's Day become to or come to have such this, you guys may be asking, how did Valentine's Day come to have such sort of an outsized, you know, effect on culture, like there isn't really any other, other than St. Patrick's Day, I can't really think of a whole lot of other Saints Feast Days that are like national holidays. Well, and I didn't even realize for a little bit when I was little that Valentine's Day was a Saints Feastay. Exactly, yeah.

But you guys can actually thank Jeffrey Chaucer. Really? Yeah, I did not know this. As in Canterbury Tales? As in Canterbury Tales. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Canterbury Tales are sort of are crazy. But this is, this is not from Canterbury Tales.

This is from a 699 line poem called the Parliament of Fowles. Yeah. So it's quite a slog. So the poem is actually about the marriage of King Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia. Really? Yeah. So it's kind of, there's, it's all over the place, as you could imagine, for like a 700-line poem.

But this poem sort of explores sort of the more modern understanding of love as sort of like this, you know, passion and sort of like this emotional, you know, thing that we, that we celebrate on St. Valentine's Day. Obviously, it sort of has its origins in St. Valentine performing, you know, secret marriages for people. but it sort of develops and in Chaucer it really takes you know, flight, pun intended.

Sorry. I'll do that again. But it isn't until Chaucer that this sort of passion in the holiday really, pun intended, takes flight. Oh, boy. So this is line 309 of this poem. He writes, for this was on St. Valentine's, times day when every foul cometh there to chase his make of every kind that men think may and that so huge a noise gan they make that earth and sea and tree in every lake so full was that anise was their space for me to ston so full was all the place so full was all the place so kind of talking about uh middle of february is when the birds started coming out and they started you know mating started having uh having baby having baby birds um

And he sort of ties this, this point in time where they start noticing all the birds coming out on St. Valentine's Day. That's very interesting. Yeah. And again, this whole poem sort of is really emphasizing sort of the nature-natural conduct as opposed. What? That's not the line of them. Also, do you want to mention Lupercalia at all? the Roman feast.

I kind of don't want to because I don't really want to be like, oh, this is a replacement for a pagan feast day because that's stupid. And always has been stupid. And I hate that because they're always like, well, isn't it interesting that there's a Roman feast day here? Well, he died on February 14th.

What do you want me to say? Yeah, yeah. So of course they're going to replace the pagan fertility feast with the, which, funny enough, involved random matchmaking. That's really fun. Men drew the name of a young woman from a box, and the pair became a couple,

which is low-key kind of what happens today. Goofy awe. Goofy ah. Yeah, we can. I don't really want to, but we probably should just for... No, we're not going to. Okay.

We're not going to. I'm not going to feed that narrative. Sure. Okay. This is a podcast. We're not a historical show. We make our own narrative. Okay

All right, so where am I going to start off? By screaming. Okay. So the Parliament of Fowles, this poem from Jeffrey Chaucer is really where we get, sort of, especially in the English language. He's, you know, widely credited as the first, specifically English writer

to associate sort of romantic love of St. Valentine. There's a, you know, a couple scholars from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who wrote about this a little bit Chaucer sort of influenced on modern day Valentine's Day they sort of you know again they talk about the context of the poem

as being about the marriage of King Richard of England and Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer sort of uses the literary device of three eagles who are vying for sort of the attention of a single female eagle. And there's really no conclusion. The marriage is postponed. And this is likely an indication referencing the fact that King Richard and Queen Anna of Bohemians,

their marriage was postponed after like for five years. Really interesting. Yeah. So this whole, this whole poem is, if you have a chance, go read it. It's actually, you know, really, really, it's a great poem. It'll probably take you a while because, again, it's 700 lines. Jeez. But it's, yeah.

And it's, you know, it's really fun. It's really sort of like pithy. And then, oh, there's other parts where he. Okay, we can all include this. Later on in the poem, the next stanza, he, chaucer writes, and write as Alan in the plant In the plant of Devsith nature of a ray and face

What, dude, middle English is crazy He heard their find This noble empress full of grace Bad every foul to take his own place As they were wont all way For year to year Stanton's Day To stand in there

And right as Alan In the plant of Kind Dev Sith nature of a ray and face Okay, Debbie Siff's nature of a ray and face Okay, Debbie Seth. Whatever, okay. Later in the same poem, he mentioned St. Valentine again,

or St. Valentine's Day again, he says, And write is Alan in the plant of kind, Devseth nature of array and face. In switch array men mightn hear their find. This noble empress full of grace, bad every foul to take his own place. As they were wont all way for year to year, St. Valentine's Day, Dustondin here.

And again, this is about, 80 lines down. You know well how St. Valentine's Day, by my own statute and through my governance, ye come forward to chase and flee your way. Your makes as I prick you with pleasant with Plez, pleasant. What the hell is that?

My rightful ordinance, may I not let for all this world to win, that he that most is worthy shall begin. I will cut that part out. And yeah, there are a couple other places where you mentioned St. Valentine. fine. It would be, because of the context is sort of hard for me to include the whole section that, you know, it would sort of make sense including. But again, yeah, this poem by Chaucer, very, it's the only copy of it that I could find is in Middle English. So trying to read it from there is interesting. But yeah, that's, that's sort of all I had on, on, on, we've probably got to fill about five or six more minutes. you think how long have we been going 20

okay let's do let's talk about Lupercalia okay sure I'll I can start I'll throw it to you by saying is there

see are there any other reasons why it might be we might celebrate St. Valentine's on February 14th yeah so that's Josser sort of tying St. Valentine's Day

with romantic love also to February 14th But Mark, are there any other reasons why we might celebrate it on February 14th? There is actually. So previous to Christianity, there was a Roman festival called the Feast of Lupercalia, which was a pagan festival honoring the Roman fertility god, Lupricus, that involved random matchmaking, funny enough. So listen to this. During the festival, men would draw the name of a young woman from a box, and that pair would become a couple. like they would be quote unquote dating or they would be married?

Well, they would become a couple in some sort of sense, sometimes for the long term. So it's a little unclear. It seems like they wouldn't be married right away, but perhaps they would begin dating. Sure. You know, if you'll permit me to use that term. Yeah. Sorry. But perhaps they would become dating if you'll permit me to use that term.

I have more on that. Okay. In fact, let me just do. I'll just do this whole thing again. Okay. There is actually Dom. So previous to St. Valentine in Christianity, there was a Roman feast held on February 15th, not 14th, but it was known as the Feast of Lupercalia. This was a pastoral festival of ancient Rome observed annually to purify the city promoting health and fertility.

It was primarily a fertility festival. Okay. Um, it was held to honor the god Lupricus. Okay. Who was a Roman fertility god. It was held in the Lupercal cave, the Palantine Hill, and the forum, all of which were central locations, excuse me, in Rome's foundation myth. Okay. Yeah.

Near the cave stood a sanctuary of Rumina, who was the goddess of breastfeeding, and the wild fig tree to which Romulus and Remus were brought by divine intervention of Tiberinus. Near the cave stood a sanctuary of rumina, the goddess of breastfeeding, so you can sense the fertility themes that are kind of woven throughout this festival. The rites are interesting. So at the altar, a male goat and a dog were sacrificed by one or another of the Luperki, which are the priests that are specifically for this feast. Yeah. Under the supervision of the Flamandialis, Jupiter's chief priest.

Interesting. Okay. An offering was also made of salted meal cakes prepared by the Vestal Virgins, and after the blood sacrificed, two Luperkei approached the altar. Their foreheads were anointed with blood with a sacrificial knife, and wiped clean with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to laugh. The feast followed, after which the Luperkei cut thongs from the flayed skin of the animal, and with the...

There's no way we can include that. Okay. The sacrificial feast followed during which the priests would run with nearly no clothes on around the old Palantine boundary in an anti-clockwise direction around the hill. It's interesting, too. There's also, there was a ritual that went on where the young men of the city would take young women's names out of a box at random. And those people would then be paired together as a couple. And sometimes, sometimes it lasted. But it was random matchmaking.

You can think of it as ancient Roman speed dating. Well, in the year 496, Pope Jalasius decided to put an end to that. I'd say, no more. We're not going to celebrate this anymore. And instead, they were going to celebrate on February 14th, St. Valentine's Day. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, one of the things that I think is really unique about Christianity is,

especially when it started becoming sort of a state religion, regardless of whether or not you, like regardless of whether or not this, you know, is historically, you know, viable as an explanation. I mean, a lot of people think that Christians just sort of like take over pagan feasts and make them Christian.

You know, this is also sort of whenever Christmas time comes around, this is always a mess. Right, you always hear that Saturnalia. Yeah. Yeah. And like, historically that is a dubious claim. But even if it weren't, it's like, yeah, okay, we just took a pagan feast day

and we turned it into a celebration of our God's birthday. That's right. So what are you going to do about that? And, you know, similar, regardless of whether or not, this Roman pagan feast was sort of actually replaced by Valentine's Day,

sort of the idea that Christians have that sort of like social cachet to be able to just, hey, this is bad. We're going to do something like actually wholesome and celebrate someone good and, you know, actually celebrate, you know, real love.

Yeah, it's often, it's often like brought up as a, oh, you know, this is just some pagan feasts that you have now taken over. But even, even if, you know, that's his, as you said, historically dubious. But assuming it is true, there's a certain kind of beauty in that. It's like the triumph of the Christian world over the pagan world in a certain way. Yeah, I think it's really fascinating. And I think that, you know, Christians, you know, even, again, if they run into the sort of individuals who think that that's sort of a tear down

of Christianity, I would just say why are you coming at it from that angle? It seems to me that actually our ability to take and reshape feast days into celebrations of, you know, the one true God.

That's actually sort of a pro in Christianity's column. And hey, what feast day are we... Sorry. And hey, what day are we... What day are we? we celebrating this Saturday? St. Valentine's Day, baby. Not Lupercalia. That's right. Yeah. St. Valentine's Day. Yeah. Well, Mark, is there anything you want to say before we sign off for

today? I just want to wish all our listeners to have a happy St. Valentine's Day this weekend. Thank you for listening. We have been Cloud of Witnesses. Stay holy. See you next week.