VALENTINE'S DAY

Feast of love and friendship... sweetly celebrate

History and Traditions
The 'origin of Valentine's Day... the rite of fertility. Since the fourth century A. C. The pagan Romans paid homage, with a unique annual ritual, the god Lupercus. The names of women and men who worshiped this God was placed in an urn and properly mixed. So a child chose at random a few couples who have lived for a whole year in intimacy so that the fertility rite was over. The next year would then be started again with other couples. Determined to put an end to this old nineteenth-century practice, the precursors of the Church fathers sought a saint "of the lovers' to replace the deleterious Lupercus. So they found a likely candidate in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years before.

the Legend
In Rome, in 270 D. Bishop C of Interamna Valentine, a friend of the young lovers, he was invited by Emperor Claudius II and these fool tried to persuade him to stop this strange initiative and convert back to paganism. Valentine's Day, with dignity, refused to renounce his faith and, unwisely, tried to convert Claudius II to Christianity. On February 24, 270, Valentine was stoned and then beheaded. The story also claims that while Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, has "fallen" in love with the blind daughter of the warden, Asterius, and with his faith he miraculously restored the sight to the girl and that, following, he had signed the following farewell message: "from your Valentine," a phrase that lived long after the death of its author...".