Love Has Become Anybody's Game

Warhol/Lips

Source: Wikiart

Valentine's Day has always been about the birds and the bees.

But it hasn’t always been for all of us.

Once upon a time, way back in the 3rd century, a Roman priest, Valentinus, restored the sight of a blind child, and converted the 44 members of her household to his religion. For which he was beaten and beheaded near the Flaminian Gate, reportedly on February 14. In the same place, and on the same date, another Valentinus, a bishop from the middle of Italy, cured a cripple and converted his household and paid the same price.

In the centuries before and after the first Valentines lost their heads, Roman governors asked Christians to swear by the salus, or health, and genius, or procreative powers, of the emperor. They repeated this order: “We swear by the genius of our Lord the emperor and we offer prayers for his salus. And you should too.”

All over the empire, sacrifices of food, wine and incense were made on behalf of the emperor's fertility. Some of those sacrifices were made in a field on the outskirts of Rome. On excavated fragments of marble, there are indications that animals were slaughtered in honor of the genius of Nero, and in honor of the geniuses of Domitian, Marcus Aurelius and their imperial successors. Other sacrifices were made on the Roman frontiers. A papyrus calendar recovered from a camp on the Euphrates orders that cows, bulls and oxen be slaughtered on behalf of the imperial genius, in January, February, March, April, July, August and September, where the record breaks off.

Roman emperors propagated, no doubt in part as a result. Women were recruited by their wives and mothers, senators and soldiers. And emperors had sexual access to hundreds or thousands of unmarried slaves.

Then at the end of the 5th century, pope Gelasius I set up a Feast of St Valentine, in honor of the Christian martyrs, on the 14th of February. It followed the Feast for the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, traditionally 40 days after the birth of her son. Candles were lit, and pairs of turtledoves were sacrificed.

Gelasius was anticipated by the Church Fathers, who wrote essays about virginity and practiced celibacy. As St Augustine wrote: “Regard the troops of virgins, holy boys and girls: this kind has been trained up in thy Church; there for thee it hath been budding from its mother’s breasts.” St Jerome harped on the subject. “Chastity was always preferred to the condition of marriage. As regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married.” Or as St Ambrose summed up: “Our flesh was cast out of paradise by a man and woman, and was joined to God through a virgin.”

Gelasius, Augustine, Jerome and Ambrose, like other celibate popes, bishops, priests and monks, prayed for the souls of lords who crowded their castles with women. And covered the countryside with bastards.

Then toward the end of the 14th century, things started to change again. When Chaucer wrote his Parliament of Fowls, in honor of the betrothal of his king to his queen, he understood that every one of their subjects would have the right to pick a mate. Parliament was a new thing in Chaucer's day, and all sorts of birds were having their say. As he explained in the language of the people, Middle English: “For this was on sent Valentynes day/Whan every foul cometh there to chese his make/Of every kynde that men thynke may/And that so huge a noyse gan they make/That erthe, and eyr, and tre, and every lake/So ful was, that unethe was there space/For me to stonde, so ful was al the place.”

Ever since Chaucer, love has democratized. These days, most of us are free to breed. Or not to breed.

And to love whoever we choose.