The History of Valentine's Day

Who Was St. Valentine, and Was There More Than One?

There was more than one. The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia lists "at least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs," under February 14 in early church calendars ^[1]. One was a priest at Rome. Another was bishop of Interamna, the modern town of Terni in central Italy. Both seem to have died in the second half of the third century, and both were said to be buried along the Via Flaminia, the old road north from Rome. A third Valentine died in Africa with companions, and almost nothing else is known about him.

Penn State's research news service made the same point in plainer words: "There are multiple Saint Valentines, but none of them seems a good fit for this romantic holiday," it reported in 2011 ^[2]. The Associated Press, interviewing UCLA research professor Henry Kelly, reported that the Catholic Church has recognized as many as 50 saints with some form of the name ^[3].

The honest answer is that we know these men were remembered as martyrs, and very little more. Written accounts of their lives, called Acta, do survive for the Rome and Terni Valentines, but the Catholic Encyclopedia judged them to be "of relatively late date and of no historical value" ^[1]. The Catholic Church later changed its calendar: in 1969 it removed St. Valentine as the primary saint of February 14, which is now the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius ^[3].

Which Valentine's Day Stories Are Tradition, and What Does the Record Show?

Most of the famous stories are tradition. The best known says a Roman priest named Valentine was executed in the third century for marrying couples against the wishes of the pagan emperor Claudius II, and that he cured his jailer's daughter of blindness ^[3]. Popular retellings add a farewell note signed "from your Valentine." None of these details come from the early lists of martyrs, which record names, places and a feast day, not love stories. They belong to later legend, the same kind of late material the Catholic Encyclopedia set aside as unreliable ^[1].

The pattern is familiar from other holidays. As with the story of the first Thanksgiving or the claims about Halloween and Samhain, a vivid tale grew up long after the events, and the documents are much thinner than the legend.

Did Valentine's Day Replace the Roman Festival of Lupercalia?

Probably not, and historians disagree about how much the two have in common. Lupercalia was a mid-February Roman festival of purification. Yale historian Noel Lenski described young men running around the Palatine Hill "swatting virginal women" with strips of animal fur, and he has pointed to the seasonal and thematic overlap with the modern holiday ^[3].

The popular version goes further. It says Pope Gelasius, in the late fifth century, made February 14 a feast of St. Valentine to stamp out Lupercalia. UNLV history professor Elizabeth White Nelson told the AP that this theory first appeared in an 1807 book without evidence to support it ^[3]. Sharing a season is not the same as sharing a history, and no early source says one feast was created to replace the other. For more on how Roman customs faded as the empire changed, see why the Roman Empire fell.

When Did Valentine's Day Become About Love?

In the late 1300s, in English poetry. "The earliest evidence of an association between Saint Valentine's Day and celebrating romantic love is in a 14th-century poem by Chaucer," said Caroline Eckhardt, a Chaucer scholar and head of comparative literature at Penn State ^[2]. That poem, the Parliament of Fowls, is set on St. Valentine's Day, when birds gather to choose their mates.

Scholars still argue about which day Chaucer meant. Eckhardt noted that the poem describes a springtime scene, so the setting "could be as late as May" ^[2]. Henry Kelly, author of Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine, argues that Chaucer had in mind a different St. Valentine whose feast fell on May 3, and that the poem marked the 1381 engagement of King Richard II. Mid-February in England, he told the AP, is no time for courting birds: "Winter is endless" ^[3].

Whatever Chaucer intended, the idea spread. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes a "conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages" that birds began to pair on February 14. It points to 14th and 15th century writers, including the poet John Gower and the Paston family letters, as evidence that the day had become one for sweethearts and love letters ^[1]. The romance of Valentine's Day is a medieval English and French invention, not an ancient Roman one. Readers who want more on this period can browse our Middle Ages era page.

How Did Paper Valentines Spread in Britain and the United States?

Printed valentines took off in England first. Embossed paper lace valentine cards appeared there around 1803 and grew more popular as printing and manufacturing improved, according to the Newport Historical Society ^[4]. By the 1840s the custom had caught on in America too. The American Antiquarian Society, which holds more than 3,000 valentines from the 1830s to 1900, records that on February 14, 1846, more than 30,000 valentines passed through the New York City post office in a single day ^[5].

Many of the fanciest early cards sold in the United States were English imports. That is where Esther Howland comes in. Born in 1828, she graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1847 ^[6]. Family tradition holds that an ornate English valentine sent that year by a business associate of her father inspired her. Her father, Southworth Howland, was a leading stationer in Worcester, and she persuaded him to order fancy papers, laces and trimmings from his suppliers in England and Germany ^[7].

She worked from the family home on Summer Street and hired local women to fill orders, an early assembly line for lace valentines ^[5]. In 1879 she went into partnership with Edward Taft as the New England Valentine Company, and in 1881 George C. Whitney bought the company ^[7]. Sources disagree on how much she earned: the American Antiquarian Society says sales reached $75,000 a year, while a Mount Holyoke account puts the figure near $100,000 ^{[5] [6]}.

Was she truly first? The Worcester Historical Museum says it is "generally agreed" that Howland was the first to design and manufacture valentines in Worcester, but notes that Taft family folklore gives that honor to Jotham Wood Taft ^[7]. Either way, for nearly 100 years Worcester was the center of the commercial valentine industry in the United States. By 1888 Whitney had bought out ten major American valentine makers, and the Whitney company kept producing Howland's designs until 1941 ^{[7] [4]}.

Which Valentine's Day Customs Are American, and Which Came From Elsewhere?

The holiday Americans know is a blend. Its saint came from Italy, its romance from medieval England and France, its lace cards from England, and its mass card business from Massachusetts. Penn State noted in 2011 that the day is also celebrated in places as far apart as Singapore, Guatemala and South Africa ^[2].

Custom	Where it took shape	What the record shows
Feast of martyrs named Valentine on February 14	Rome and Terni, Italy	Listed in early church calendars; life stories are late [1]
Linking the day to love and birds choosing mates	England and France, Middle Ages	First seen in Chaucer's late 1300s poetry [2]
Embossed paper lace valentine cards	England, early 1800s	Appeared around 1803 [4]
Mailing valentines in large numbers	United States, 1840s	Over 30,000 through the New York City post office on February 14, 1846 [5]
A commercial valentine industry	Worcester, Massachusetts	The U.S. center of the trade for nearly 100 years [7]

By 2011, Penn State reported, Valentine's Day buyers were purchasing about 160 million greeting cards and 35 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolates a year ^[2]. Those figures are more than a decade old, but they show how far the custom traveled from a list of martyrs. A saint's feast day became a mass-market holiday only after printing, cheap postage and factory production arrived in the 1800s. To see how other American holidays took shape, browse our holidays section or read the history of Labor Day.