The History of Valentine's Day

Familiar flowers fill the shop windows wherever you look at this time of year. Of course – it’s February and the run-up to St Valentine’s Day. But where do these traditions actually come from? I was interested and decided to do a little bit of time tunnelling!

There are at least three contenders for who the original Valentine may have been (you may not guess, but Valentine was a very common name in the past – there were loads of them!).

My favourite legend refers to a priest called Valentine. When the Roman Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for soldiers as he felt single men made better soldiers, this Valentine defied the order and performed secret marriage ceremonies for young lovers anyway. 

For this, he was executed around 270 AD. The February timing of our Saint Valentine’s celebration may refer back to the saint’s execution, but there is every chance that it has its root in a pagan ritual called Lupercalia which the Romans celebrated.

It was dedicated to Faunus, a god of agriculture and fertility, and to Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. 

Part of the festival was a ritual where young women put their names into an urn, and the bachelors of the community picked a name out. For the coming year, these pairs became couples, and many of these random combinations actually resulted in marriage.

During the early centuries of Christianity, these practices were (understandably) outlawed, but in the Middle Ages, a new idea took hold: it was thought that birds began looking for a mate around Saint Valentine’s Day. 

The poet Geoffrey Chaucer 14th-century poem is the earlier record of this idea with his poem “The Parliament of Fowls,” in which “Seynt Valentynes day” is the day “whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make” . 

The idea caught on. The earliest Valentine’s note to be sent goes back to the aftermath of the Battle of Agincourt when Charles, Duke of Orleans, wrote to his wife from captivity in 1415. His poem refers to her as ‘my very gentle Valentine’. Tragically, he never saw her again.

William Shakespeare and John Donne both cemented Saint Valentine’s reputation as the patron of romantic love. But it was the Victorians who really turbo-charged the tradition – they went into romantic overdrive with ever more elaborate Valentine’s cards and greetings. 

These could be shop bought, commissioned or best of all, home-made and were commonly decorated with love birds, hearts and Cupid – pretty much the Valentine’s Day that we know today.

Writing Challenge: I thought it would be fun to create a Valentine’s poem to an inanimate object that you love: a toy, a book, a favourite item of clothing. Include descriptions and imagery of what the item means for you, and perhaps the reaction it prompts for you – do you tremble whenever you go near? 

Is it the light and the life of every hour? The more exaggerated and over the top, the more entertaining it will be! We at the Time Tunnellers would love to see your work if you are willing to share it. Find us on social media @TimeTunnellers.

Women's History Month: Being a Saint Ain't Easy by Catherine Randall

March is Women’s History Month when we celebrate the lives and achievements of women throughout history. 

Until comparatively recently, most history was about men. After all, broadly speaking, men were the rulers, the law-makers, the generals and the scholars. Men were the ones who did things and history was about what they did. And most history was written by men too.

Thankfully, things have changed dramatically and we now know a lot more about the lives and achievements of women. However, it is still true that the further back in history you go, the harder it is to find women who are remembered in their own right, and not just for being the mothers, daughters or wives of famous men. The obvious exception is powerful female rulers, like Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I. 

But there were other remarkable women from long ago who made their mark on history in their own right and left behind the evidence to prove it. Prominent among these were the early Christian female saints.

I’m going to tell you about two of them. Their names were Perpetua and Felicity.

Perpetua and Felicity lived more than 1800 years ago, at the beginning of the third century AD. They lived in North Africa, in a place called Carthage, which at the time was in the Roman province of Africa, and today is in Tunisia. Vibia Perpetua was 22, a well-educated noblewoman with a young son, probably a widow. Felicity was a slave, pregnant with her first child. At the time, Christians in this part of the Roman Empire faced persecution, yet both of these women bravely decided to become Christians, and as a result were arrested, imprisoned and put to death.

Septimius Severus was Roman Emperor at the time of the saints' deaths (Glyptothek, Munich)

But the most remarkable thing about this – and why we know so much about it - is that Perpetua left behind a diary, a document now known as The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity. This is one of the earliest surviving first-person narratives written by a woman. 

Apparently, Perpetua’s mother had been a Christian, but her father was not, and in her diary she writes of how he pleaded with her to change her mind. She wouldn’t do so, and both women were arrested and imprisoned.

Perpetua describes the terrible heat of the prison (this is north Africa, remember) and the rough behaviour of the guards. She also writes about how upset she is at having to leave behind her baby, including the physical torment caused by the fact that she abruptly has to stop breast-feeding him. When she is allowed to continue breast-feeding, after bribing the guards to move her to a better part of the prison where he can be with her, she writes of the great relief and happiness she feels.

At a hearing in front of the Roman Governor, Perpetua and Felicity both refused to give up their Christian faith and were therefore condemned to public execution by means of wild beasts. Both women, along with three Christian men, were to be put to death at the military games held in Carthage to celebrate Emperor Septimius Severus’s birthday. Perpetua’s record of her trial and imprisonment ends the day before the games.

Remains of the Roman Amphitheatre at Carthage.
The column in the centre is a memorial to the Christian martyrs

‘Of what was done in the games themselves, let him write who will,’ Perpetua writes. The diary was finished by an eyewitness, who relates that Felicity gave birth to a daughter before the games, which meant that she could join Perpetua in her martyrdom. (Roman law forbade pregnant women to be put to death.) Arrangements were made for Felicity's daughter and Perpetua's son to be cared for after their deaths.

If you have read Vita and the Gladiator by my fellow Time Tunneller, Ally Sherrick, you will have a sense of what Perpetua, Felicity and their male counterparts experienced when they walked into the Roman arena. The eyewitness account emphasises how bravely they faced their deaths, entering the arena with their heads held high, so strong was their faith in God. The men sentenced to die alongside Perpetua and Felicity were attacked by bears, leopards and wild boars, Perpetua and Felicity were set upon by a rabid cow.  But the wild beasts failed to kill them, and they were put to death by sword. 

Perpetua and Felicity have been revered as saints ever since their deaths, and they are still remembered in all branches of the Christian church today. In life they were separated by social class - Perpetua was a noblewoman and Felicity a slave - but they died together as sisters, which would been a powerful witness to their status-conscious contemporaries as to the radical nature of the Christian faith. Their feast day, on which they are especially remembered, is 7 March.

It is remarkable to think that, in St Perpetua’s account of her imprisonment, we can read the voice of someone who lived over 1800 years ago.

Watch Catherine's YouTube video about St Perpetua and St Felicity by clicking here

Catherine Randall is the author of The White Phoenix , an historical novel for 9-12 year olds set in London, 1666. It was shortlisted for the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award 2021. Catherine is currently working on a children's novel set in Victorian London.

The White Phoenix is published by the Book Guild and available from bookshops and online retailers.

For more information, go to Catherine’s website: www.catherinerandall.com.

Twitter: @Crr1Randall.

Girl Racer: recreating the world of the Circus Maximus by Annelise Gray

My childhood reading obsessions were with books about ponies. I had a whole shelf devoted to them – the Jill series by Ruby Fergusson, an assortment of titles by the prolific Pullein-Thompson sisters. If I’d known about the Flambards trilogy by K.M. Peyton at the time, that would have been on there too. Pride of place in my collection, though, was given over to a dog-eared copy of National Velvet by Enid Bagnold, the tale of a girl who wins a wild horse in a village raffle and dreams of riding him to victory at the Grand National. 

It now has a home on the shelf above my writing desk, the lodestar and inspiration for my Circus Maximus series, which follows the adventures of a horse-mad Roman girl called Dido, whose dream is to be break into the all-male world of charioteering and compete at the Circus Maximus, the greatest sporting stadium in the ancient world. 

In conjuring up the historical setting for Dido’s adventures, my other literary inspiration, besides National Velvet, is Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth, the tale of a young Roman soldier’s quest to discover what happened to his missing father’s lost legion. As well as being a riveting adventure story, I’m in awe of the way Sutcliff brings the bleak landscape of Roman Britain to life but in a way that never feels like she’s borrowing on cliched tropes about the ancient world. 

That was my aspiration with the Circus Maximus series. Plenty of research underpins the novels, but I hope the reader never feels that they’re having a history lesson. Instead, by immersing them in the period, I want them to feel as if they are right there besides Dido and her fellow characters, smelling the same scents in the air, feeling the noise coming up through the ground as the vast Circus crowd roars and stamps its feet in anticipation. The ultimate goal is to make people think I know what it’s like to drive a chariot, even though – a little to my regret – I never have.

To that end, much of my background research prior to writing the series was into the world of chariot racing, ancient Rome’s favourite sport. I drew from a tapestry of different sources – literary, artistic and archaeological. Written eyewitness accounts from the time provide a glimpse into the build-up to a race – the charioteers drawing lots to see which of the Circus’s twelve starting gates they will be allocated; stable-hands and grooms holding harness, plaiting manes and trying to soothe their four-legged charges; the horses’ hot breath puffing through the gates. Thanks to inscriptions in honour of winning teams, we know the names of hundreds of horses who raced at the Circus and even their colour and sometimes their breeding.

No actual Roman racing chariots survive from the ancient world, but little model replicas – such as this one currently held by the British Museum - assist with their reconstruction and demonstrate how much smaller, flimsier and more dangerous to drive they would have been than the cumbersome vehicles seen in the classic film Ben-Hur. Meanwhile, mosaics from North Africa, where many of the best horses and drivers began their careers, give us close-ups of the uniform of the charioteers, their coloured tunics denoting which of the four big racing factions they represented – Reds, Blues, Whites and Greens.

Mosaic from the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome depicting a charioteer and horse from each of the four factions

Curse tablets buried under the track at ancient circuses and inscribed with spells wishing a gruesome death on teams from particular factions - demonstrate how fierce the rivalries were between supporters. That hostile tribalism, particularly between the Blues and Green factions, is much in evidence during all three Circus Maximus books and plays a key part in determining the course of Dido’s life. 

Of all the evidence I drew on in writing the books though, my favourite are the games tokens that were found in the grave of a young Roman girl from the fourth century. Six little ivory discs, with an image of a horse on one side and a victorious charioteer on the other, they were buried with the girl alongside a doll with jointed arms and legs and plaited hair. One theory is that the tokens were keepsakes from a day at the races, and it’s a poignant image, that idea that maybe this girl loved going to the Circus and her family buried it with her as mementoes of a happy day. From my point of view, it’s always seemed unlikely that amongst the quarter of a million people who could fit into the Circus Maximus on race day, there weren’t at least a handful of girls – young Velvet Browns of the past – who longed to be down on that great track themselves, competing for glory, hearing their name on the crowd’s lips. That’s an image I always hold in my head as I write Dido’s story. 

You can watch Annelise Gray's video on Roman Chariot Races by clicking here.

Annelise Gray was born in Bermuda and moved to the UK as a child. She grew up riding horses and dreaming of becoming a writer. After studying Classics under Professor Mary Beard, she earned her PhD in 2004 and has worked as a historical researcher and as a Latin teacher. Her debut children’s novel, Circus Maximus: Race to the Death (Zephyr Books) was longlisted for the 2022 Branford Boase Award and named as a Children’s Book of the Week in the Sunday Times. There are now two more titles in the Circus Maximus series, Rivals on the Track and Rider of the Storm, which was published on World Book Day this year.

Author website: www.annelisegray.co.uk

Twitter: @AnneliseGray

Annelise Gray's books are available online and from bookshops, including The Rocketship Bookshop, Salisbury