Blood Red Love Blood Red Day

 Written By: Everett Kirkman

Staff Writer

      Executions, beatings and murder aren’t what most of us have in mind when we hear Valentine’s Day, yet all these and more are part of the bloody history of this day of love. The exact beginning is somewhat muddled, but the prevailing story follows.

      A priest named Valentinus lived during the reign of Claudius II of Rome, and defied his order that young men should not be married. Valentinus defied the order and continued to marry young people in secret. The Emperor discovered Valentinus rebellion, and in prison, he fell in love with the jailer’s blind daughter whom he tutored. The day before his beheading in 270A.D., he wrote her one last letter and signed it “Your Valentine.”  Broken Heart

      The next day he was beaten, stoned and beheaded at the Emperor’s command.

In 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius I declared Feb. 14 St. Valentine’s Day. This was partly because Valentinus was thought to have died on Feb. 14 and partly because Pope Gelasius wanted to Christianize the Roman holiday of Lupercalia.

Since 31 B.C. the Romans celebrated Lupercalia as a day of fertility where priests and bachelors of the cities would sacrifice a dog and a goat both thought to be sexually active, and then whips from the hides of the animals were used to whip the women. The people thought this would create ease of delivery for pregnant women and pregnancy for the barren.

The eligible women of the town would also place their names in a jar from which the men would draw.  Then the two would be paired for the duration of the festival which lasted from Feb. 13-15. Pope Gelasius thought he could remove the immorality from the celebration by making it Christian. Gelasius was right and Lupercalia eventually died out.

      In the 1300s, the history of Valentine’s Day brightens. St. Valentine’s Day was made popular by both Shakespeare and Chaucer. Chaucer composed a 700-line poem about love for England’s Richard II and Anne of Bohemia for the one year anniversary of their engagement. He likened them to birds which were thought to begin mating on Feb. 14 thus coining the phrase “Love Birds.” In 1850 Esther A. Howland mass produced Valentine’s Day cards for people to buy and in 1913 Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Mo., and began making Valentine’s Day cards.

he history of Valentine’s Day did not stay bright for long.

In 1929 on Feb. 14, Al “Scarface” Capone sent four of his thugs to a garage owned by Bugs Moran. Moran was Capone’s only competition in the Rum running Chicago business, and Capone wanted to end it. Capone’s men, dressed as police officers, pretended to arrest the seven men inside, but after lining them up on a wall, Moran’s men were shot to pieces. The FBI recovered 90 bullets from the crime scene from Thompson sub-machine guns, shotguns and handguns.

Neither Bug’s Moran nor Al Capone were in town when this took place, but it did eradicate Capone’s competition. Moran and his gang disappeared.

      Forty years later in 1969, Pope Paul VI removed St. Valentine’s Day from the Official Roman Catholic Calendar because of the uncertainty of its origins, and Valentinus’ martyrdom in the third century. Legend has it there were three Valentinus.

When Feb. 14 rolls around and you’re sitting at home single, or going out to buy roses and candy for loved ones, consider possibly a replica of an executioner’s sword or a Tommy gun to commemorate the bloody history of our favorite Holiday of Love.

Everett Kirkman is an English major with a focus on creative writing. He has widely varied interests which include politics, and adventures in travel and the outdoors. Everett has no idea what he is doing with his life or his future, and writes solely for the enjoyment of it. Everett can many times be found in the library on a couch or beneath a tree writing about anything under the sun. You can contact him at ekrikman0048@bryan.edu or follow him on FaceBook as Everett Kirkman.   

Everett Kirkman
Everett Kirkman