Valentine’s Day has become a permanent part of the holiday calendar in Poland. On this day, lovers show their feelings for each other even more than on a daily basis. So who is Saint Valentine, who patronizes this day?
– Information from the first centuries of Christianity, which is difficult to verify, shows that St. Valentine was the bishop of Interamna Nahars – today’s Terni in Italy. One version of his biography places this figure in the 3rd century – reminds Dr. Damian Kasprzyk, an ethnologist from the University of Łódź. Bishop Valentine was supposed to perform weddings secretly at a time when Emperor Claudius II issued an edict prohibiting young men from marrying before completing their military service.
However, this is not the only version of Saint Valentine’s biography. This places his character in the next century. – Bishop Walenty was then supposed to miraculously heal the son of a famous philosopher from neurological ailments, who in return agreed to be baptized. The Roman Senate, concerned regarding the authority of Bishop Valentine, ordered his assassination. In the light of these accounts, Bishop Walenty was martyred around 269 or 347 – explains Dr. Kasprzyk. For the next 1,000 years, people prayed to Saint. Valentine for relief for those suffering from mental illnesses and epilepsy.
Valentine’s day. Since when is Saint Valentine the patron saint of lovers?
Dr. Kasprzyk recalled that it was only in medieval England that St. Valentine began to appear as the patron saint of lovers. In Poland, this saint is also not an unknown figure. More than a dozen churches and monasteries have his relics. In the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Chełmno, a fragment of the saint’s head is kept in a 17th-century reliquary commissioned by a noblewoman as a votive offering for the healing of her daughter. Another interesting place is the Sanctuary of St. Valentine’s Day Bieruń in Silesia. Pilgrims have been coming here from near and far for over 300 years, asking for grace and intercession in matters of mental illness and epilepsy.
– Recently, places of this type have taken into account the “loving” patronage of St. Valentine. On the website of the Sanctuary of the Transfiguration in Galewa, where his cult is cultivated, you can read the content of the prayers: “for love”, “for my girlfriend”, “for my boy”, “the right choice in life partner”. On the website of the cathedral parish of St. Nicholas w Kalisz we will find the text of the “litany to St. Valentine” as well as several short “prayers for lovers” – emphasized Kasprzyk and noted that this refutes the thesis that Valentine’s Day is a completely commercial holiday that has nothing to do with religion.
Hence, Dr. Kasprzyk estimated that “love and health patronage can be combined in the case of Saint Valentine.” – Let us not jokingly remind you that the metaphor of love as a disease (often mental) is widely represented in cultural texts. Love is a special disease. “Loving out of love” may provide us with salvation, but true happiness comes only from reciprocated love, concluded Dr. Kasprzyk.
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