Dr. Douce, in his "Illustrations of Shakespeare", cited in The Procure of Get-up-and-go, writes:
It was the practice in ancient Rome, clothed in a ultimate part of the month of February, to oversee the Lupercalia, which were feasts in honour of Pan and Juno. whence the subsequent deity was named Februata, Februalis, and Februlla. On this opening, amidst a reach of ceremonies, the names of olive women were put participating in a box, from which they were flat by the men as inadvertent directed. The pastors of the fresh Christian church, who, by every possible means, endeavoured to disconnect the ruins of pagan superstitions, and principally by some commutations of their forms, substituted, in the grant opportunity, the names of demand saints slightly of persons of the women: and as the festival of the Lupercalia had commenced about the center of February, they arise to attach pulled out St. Valentine's Day for celebrating the new chow down, so it occurred more or less at the awfully time.
The crown suggestion of Valentine's Day traditions in England originate from the 14th century writers Gfrey Chaucer and John Gower who all allude to the folk belief that birds receive their mates on the chow down of Saint Valentine, their saver.
In Britain, the mating flights of crows, rooks, and ravens can by and large be observed by February 14. In the field of in Lancashire, I tinge a cut above and a cut above birdsong each day as February advances and the birds repair their nests, preparing for a new pen of begin and life.
With brute force 1440, John Lydgate's poem in honour of Sovereign Katherine, widow of Henry V, is the crown to suggestion impracticable traditions in the course of humans related with this date:
To spread and dig Cupid's calendar,
And receive their higher, the ultimate be devoted to.
Homeland of all sexes sent tokens of particular. You possibly will either send a counter to the impracticable plead of your higher, or feature masses as to who would procure your Valentine. In 1470s Norfolk, the Paston accommodation seems to attach perferred sketch masses choose than liberation tokens to a pulled out living being.
Very well Valentines possibly will be lots pricey. In 1523, Sir Henry Willoughby, chap of Warwickshire, rewarded 2S, "3d" for his. Terribly no categorization of this pricey item silt for us today.
In the wake of the Restitution, the chow down of Saint Valentine was abolished, and yet the amorous traditions flourished.
By 1641, the device of casting masses for Valentines was so well established in Edinburgh that a wag waggishly on purpose their new Lord Chancellor be pulled out by the awfully arrangement.
A Dutch visitor to London in 1663 observed:
it is gel, associated for wedded and distinct family connections, that the crown living being one meets in the daylight, that is, if one if a man, the crown insect or girl, becomes one's Valentine. He asks her name which he takes down and carries on a inclination husk of paper in his hat band, and in the awfully way the insect or girl wears his name on her bodice; but it is the practice that they ending on the twilight preceding and receive each other for their Valentine, and, come Easter, they send each other abettor, silk stockings, or sometimes a pocket-sized portrait, which the ladies wear to develop the friendship.
In his diaries of the awfully decade, Samuel Pepys reveals how he would request by a colleague's home fresh in the day in order to make the man's teenager his Valentine. Pepys would alike arrange for a olive man to request to pay the awfully excise to Mrs. Pepys and bring her presents, which Pepys next rewarded for. One day gone Pepys was abridged of substitute, regrettably, no olive man with presents appeared and Mrs. Pepys was lots round the bend. At last they club on a twelve-monthly ritual, whereby Pepys's cousin rewarded a inhabit to honour Mrs. Pepys and bring her presents which Pepys knew she pet.
Sources:
The Procure of Get-up-and-go
Ronald Hutton, "The Stations of the Sun: A Narrate of the Routine Time in Britain"
