Valentine's Day is here and thoughts go to love and romance (and chocolate). St. Valentine's Day started as a religious celebration and is still a feast day in the Anglican Church. There are a number of early Christian saints named Valentinus and various legends to explain the origin of St. Valentine's Day. You can read about them in Saint Valentine by Robert Sabuda (J B VAL).
In the Middle Ages, the time of chivalry, Valentine's Day became associated with romantic love. When I read Samuel Pepys' diaries, I was interested to learn how people in the seventeenth century celebrated the day. Here is what Pepys wrote in 1661:
“14th (Valentine's day). Up early and to Sir W. Batten's, but would not go in till I asked whether they that opened the door was a man or a woman, and Mingo, who was there, answered a woman, which, with his tone, made me laugh; so up I went and took Mrs. Martha for my Valentine (which I do only for complacency), and Sir W. Batten he go in the same manner to my wife, and so we were very merry.”
The companion volume to the edition of Pepys' diaries, edited by Robert Latham, explains that one method of choosing a valentine was to take the first person of the opposite sex that you saw. Some years, Pepys mentioned people coming into his bedchamber early in the morning to claim him or his wife as their valentine. Just as well that we don't still follow that custom....
A hundred years later, there was a new custom of giving flowers, sweets, and cards to the loved one. And so it remains.