"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” (E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22).[1] This quote, which has served as one of our main themes this year seems to fit perfectly into the history and mythology of St. Valentine’s Day. While there are several different stories to the origins of St. Valentine’s Day, all of the tales seem to coincide with connecting prose and passion and exalting human love.
One of the most famous legends is that of the priest Valentine who was a member of the clergy during the third century in Rome. During a time of war, the Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage amongst young men and women because he believed that marriage would make his soldiers weaker. Valentine, feeling compassion for young lovers, continued to perform secret marriage ceremonies despite the Emperor’s decree. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, he was thrown in jail and sentenced to death. While in jail, it is said that he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter. Other accounts say that he converted the jailer to Christianity by healing his daughter’s blindness, and later fell in love with her. Either way, their love was the inspiration for the first valentine. 
Before his execution, Valentine wrote the young girl a letter expressing his affection for her, and signed it ‘From Your Valentine’, an expression still used today. Although this story is a tragic one, Valentine was a martyr and a leader, who’s passion for uniting others in love lead to his death. Other stories suggest that Valentine was killed for helping Christians escape from Roman prisons during a time of Christian persecution. In both separate stories, Valentine’s heroism is due much to his ability to use the sympathetic imagination. Adam Smith once said that, “as we have no immediate knowledge of what other men must feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation” (132). [2] Valentine’s ability to sympathize with others, and continue to preserve their love and virtues in a time of utter hopelessness makes him a leader and role model. While some believe that we celebrate Valentine’s Day on February 14th to honor St. Valentine’s death, others believe that Valentine’s Day was formed by the Christian Church to cover up its original origins of a pagan festival. 
This festival in ancient Rome, known as Lupercalia, was a fertility festival dedicated to various Roman gods. After sacrificing a number of animals to these Roman gods, the townspeople participated in a celebration of sprinkling the sacrificial animal’s blood on their crops and women so that they would both be fertile and fruitful in the upcoming year. Next, each woman would put her name in an urn, and each man would take his respective turn to draw a woman’s name out of the same urn. These matchings often resulted in love and marriage, hints the enduring theme of adoration on this day. 
In 498 A.D., Pope Gelasius declared February 14th St. Valentine’s Day. While he declared most of these customs not appropriate for the Christian faith, he still respected diversity by declaring this date a sacred holiday. It is also said that February 14th is typically the day on which birds begin to mate. The observance of this occurrence often enticed lovers to right letters of admiration to each other. The act of actually CONNECTING the passion felt between two lovers into prose in a valentine is a tradition that has continued on through out the generations. No matter the origins of this passionate day, St. Valentine’s Day remains one of the most celebrated feasts throughout the year. 
Lee Hays and Pete Seeger once wrote, “If I Had a Hammer.... I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land.” (words and music by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger).[3] This is what St. Valentine’s Day does, unites and connects the world for a small instant through love and passion, and allows us to express this love that we might not express otherwise.
[1] E603A Course Description (http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/%7Ebump/E603A07/course.html)
[2] Bump, Jerome. Composition and Reading in World Literature. 2008.
[3] E 603 Course Description (http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/%7Ebump/E603A07/course.html)
Referred to for Information:
-(http://www.history.com/minisites/valentine/)
-(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day)
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