Lupercalia - The Origins of Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is the popular celebration of love on February 14th, named after the  homonymous Christian martyr died in 273 AD. We do now think about the red colour, hearts, fragrant roses and the chocolates that we give to our loved ones.

There are many legends around the figure of the saint ... one tells how the bishop  saw a young couple fighting and stopped them, giving them a rose and inviting them to hold it in their hands: the couple suddenly reconciled . Another version of this story tells that the saint was able to inspire love to a young couple, by flying around them a flock of birds exchanging gestures of affection; it is believed that the expression “love birds” derives from this legend. According to another story, Valentinus married the young Christian Serapia and the Roman centurion Sabino and for this he was condemned to death.

This is what everyone knows, what perhaps is not known is that Valentine’s Day is just another pagan festival turned into a Christian holiday: we talk precisely of the Lupercalia, a feast that has nothing to do with hearts, roses and romance.

The Lupercalia is one of the oldest Roman festivals, probably of Etruscan origin, during which purification and fertility were celebrated in honour of the god Lupercus (from lupus - wolf).  Lupercus was a protector of the harvest, livestock and peasants; his figure was then syncretised to the well-known Pan.

The Wolf is a recurring figure of this celebration and an intrinsic symbol of Rome itself: the legend goes that the Lupercalia dated back to the foundation of the city, when the twins Romulus and Remus, sons of the God Mars, were suckled by a she-wolf.


FIRST PHASE OF THE RITUAL: THE LUPERCAL

The first part of the ritual was celebrated in the Lupercal, the cave where the brothers were cared for by the beast, led by the Luperci (those who followed the cult of Lupercus). According to the Roman tradition, to enter into this specific priestly order, it was obligatory to belong to the gentes Fabii or Quinctilii - two influential patrician families who claimed to be descendants of the legendary twins themselves .

During this phase, two goats and a dog were sacrificed: the first ones were a symbol of good luck as well as a symbol of fertility (just think of the cornucopia, the horn of abundance belonging to the legendary goat Amalthea and still symbol of luck, or to the hircine aspect of  Faun), while the second was the representation of the wolf or, alternatively, as an enemy of the wolf - the association is not clear. The knives, used for sacrifice, were rubbed on the forehead of two young men initiated to the cult of Lupercus; the blood was then washed from their faces with goat's milk.

The new adepts were thus assimilated to the sacrificial victim both in death, the blood on the forehead, and in the resurrection, purified with milk and smiling, which ritually meant fullness of life. According to some, this gesture represented also the privileging of a simple peasant life (symbolised by goat's milk) to a life dedicated to war and brutal fights (symbolised by blood).

Afterwards, leather strings were made from the skin of the sacrificial goats. After the initiation, the Luperci, inebriated by the wine, threw themselves into a mad race long the streets of Rome completely naked.

SECOND PHASE OF THE RITUAL: PURIFICATION


Not everyone knows that February comes from the word februare, meaning “to purify” in Latin. Originally known as Februalia or Februatio, the two festivals were then merged in a unique holiday. The ultimate goal of the celebration was prosperity, achieved through expiation, ensuring the coming crop, the fertility of the flocks and the welfare of the Roman population.

The priests, undressed and oiled, ran around the Palatine Hill - whipping with the leather strips anyone who was in their trajectory. It was believed that a single whiplash could guarantee pregnancy. The young Roman matrons, seeking blessings, used to undress to receive the miraculous whips.


According to some scholars, lashes were a symbolic representation of sexual penetration: the broken skin, penetrated by a symbol of fertility like the goat, was an efficient substitute for the copulatory act.

According to others, however, it was a way to drive out fateful influences from the population after the celebration of Parentalia - the feast of the ancestors that ended shortly before.

During this time of the year, moreover, men used to extract from an urn names of women who - for the duration of the festival - would have been consorted by them.

This ancient ceremony survived the centuries, even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; changing shape and smoothing the corners but always keeping a vivid memory in the soul of the citizens: the sacrifices were forbidden, the Luperci no longer ran naked in the streets while the women whipped their palms instead of their young naked body. 

Finally, in 469, the Emperor Gelasius definitively put an end to the celebration of the Lupercalia, declaring the anniversary of the martyr Valentinus and consequentially replacing the pagan memory of the god Lupercus; the children drew the names of the saints from the urn instead of the names of their future lovers.

In the Renaissance, thanks to classicism and humanism, people rediscovered the romantic and non-ecclesiastical nature of this feast. A return to the Arcadia, to a life regulated by natural rhythms, associating the Spring with fertility and abundance, almost in an erotic form.

The celebration of Valentine's Day, as we know it, took place during the eighteenth century when the first postcards appeared. Around 1870, Valentine's cards were more popular than Christmas’s ... the rest is history. Nowadays it is one of the most commercialised celebrations: greeting cards, chocolates, flowers and so on. But few know of the origin of this festival, so ancient and rooted in our cultural heritage.

♃Ludna

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Fonti:

The Roman Questions of Plutarch - Herbert Jennings Rose
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition (1911)
Nicola Turchi - Enciclopedia Italiana (1934)