St Valentine

Valentine is one of those feasts where the old cult is clearer than the later story. More than one martyr of this name may lie behind the tradition, one connected with Rome and another with Interamna, and the later acts have become deeply entangled with borrowed and expanded legend. Yet the feast is not dismissed. The older devotion is treated as real, and there remains no decisive reason to deny that a genuine martyr Valentine stands behind it.

What matters here is clearing away romantic clutter. It also makes plain that the later custom of Valentines belongs to a much later social history and should not be read back into the ancient martyr. So this is not a simple biography but a careful effort to preserve a real saint while refusing to pretend that every charming story attached to him is ancient.