Valentine, Cyril, and Methodius

The feast of Saint Valentine was removed from the Roman calendar during the calendar reform of 1970. It seems a shame, since this is one of a vanishingly small number of saint’s feasts that have remained in the secular culture. It seems to me that it could be used as a touchstone for the new evangelization.

Mind you, he’s still in the Martyrology, so he’s not been “un-sainted” as some seem to think.

And of course, at this morning’s Lauds from my monastic breviary, the memorial remains.

Why was Valentine removed from the general calendar? This was done mostly because it’s difficult to tease apart the stories of several early martyrs who shared this name.

Over time, their stories and their identities accreted one to another like the formation of some new planet. There were, in fact, at least 14 saints named Valentine or Valentinus.

Very little is known of the “original” martyr whose feast was fixed at 14 February by Pope Gelasius I in 496. Even in the original decree creating the feast, the Pope declared that he was a martyr “whose acts are known only to God”.

The very earliest accounts seem to conflate two men buried near Rome, one a Roman priest and the other the Bishop of Terni. Nevertheless, the Martyrology records that whoever the “original” Valentine was, he was imprisoned for giving aid to martyrs in prison, and while there converted the jailer by restoring sight to the jailer’s daughter. He was beaten and beheaded in about the year 269 and is buried on the Flaminian Way outside Rome.

The tradition of Valentine as the patron saint of lovers seems to come from Chaucer in his poem “Parliament of Fowls“.

No, these days, today is the Memorial of Saints Cyril and Methodius, two brothers who preached the Gospel in eastern Europe to the Slavs in the ninth century.

They even invented an alphabet for the Slavic languages so they could distribute their Slavonic translation of the Bible.

When Francine and I were in Rome, we visited the remains of Cyril in the Basilica di San Clemente. There was an amazing icon of the two brothers there, hanging out in the basement for no apparent reason.

It was one of those surprises you get in Rome on a fairly regular basis. You’re in a dingy alley or basement somewhere, you turn a corner, and bam! Out of nowhere, sublime beauty staring you in the face.

I suppose that’s as good a metaphor for love as I’m likely to have on a Valentine’s day morning.