Catholic Greeting Cards

The traditions of Valentine's Day mix elements of both ancient Roman rites and the Christian tradition. To complicate matters, three different saints named Valentine are recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

A legend says Valentine was a priest in Rome during the third century. The Emperor Claudius II decreed that marriage should be banned for young men, because he thought single men made better soldiers than those who were married with families.

Valentine, said the decree was unjust and unfair, and defied the Emperor by performing secret marriages for young lovers. When its shares for lovers of infiltration was discovered, Claudius ordered that Valentine be executed.

However, according to another legend, Valentine actually sent can be the first 'valentine' greeting himself. In 270 AD, the day before he was to be executed for refusing to renounce his Christian beliefs, he is said to have sent a note of appreciation of the daughter of his jailer to bring him food and delivering messages while was imprisoned, signed "from your Valentine."

While we can never be certain that the true origin of the legend of St. Valentine, one thing is certain, it must have been a story attractive and durable, because in the Middle Ages, Valentine became one of the most popular saints in France and Britain.

The timing of Valentine's Day may have been driven by the practice of trying to integrate earlier pagan festivals in the Christian calendar. In this case, the Lupercalia festival.

Lupercalia, which began on the "ides of February, was a fertility festival dedicated to agricultural Lupercus god and goddess of love, Juno, and the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. Roman girls placed their names in an urn placed in public squares and young single men pulled out for a "blind date" for the coming year. More often than not, these annual matches often ended in marriage.

Valentine's Day was first set at February 14th Pope Gelasius around 500 AD. Right now, the system of "lottery" for dating romance had considered non-Christian and was outlawed. During the Middle Ages, the practice of love lotteries conducted as "boxes Chance." In France, the drawings in boxes of young couples have given a year to get married or part company. In England, it was common for men to bear the name of the girl they took from the chance to run on their boxes, enclosed in a heart.

Also during this period, it was commonly accepted in some parts of England and France that February 14 marked the beginning of the breeding season of birds, which increased the notion that Valentine's Day should be a day for romance .

Posts Valentines began to appear around the beginning of the fifteenth century, and even in these times of training, they have often given anonymously.

The oldest known valentine in the world still in existence today is a romantic ode written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt . The reception was written in 1415, and is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London.

In the UK, Valentine has become a festival around the year 1600. He continued to take shape, with the familiar "Roses are red, violets are blue ..." verses make their debut later in the seventeenth century. In 1850, it was common for lovers of all social classes to their loved loved small gifts or handwritten letters. Meanwhile, in France, people began to decorate their valentines with ribbons and lace.

In the early twentieth century, handwritten letters gave way to maps that advances in printing technology had improved the Qu.