Emperor Claudius II slaying Valentine, from a copy of Speculum Historiale, Vincent of Beauvais, c. 1335, Bibliothèque nationale de France
February 14, 2018, brings about the rare concatenation of two extreme perspectives on human life. One is love, on Valentine’s Day; the other is death, on Ash Wednesday. Both are the same day this year. And both are courtesy of the early Roman Catholic church, though the former has become secular, while the latter remains religious. It’s not hard to imagine why: There wouldn’t be much of a market for Ash Wednesday cards.
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Emperor Claudius II slaying Valentine, from a copy of Speculum Historiale, Vincent of Beauvais, c. 1335, Bibliothèque nationale de France
February 14, 2018, brings about the rare concatenation of two extreme perspectives on human life. One is love, on Valentine’s Day; the other is death, on Ash Wednesday. Both are the same day this year. And both are courtesy of the early Roman Catholic church, though the former has become secular, while the latter remains religious. It’s not hard to imagine why: There wouldn’t be much of a market for Ash Wednesday cards.
Valentine’s Day began in commemoration of St. Valentine. It seems that in the third century A.D., Emperor Claudius II of Rome issued a ban on marriages and engagements, to encourage young men to join the army instead. But Valentine went ahead and continued marrying couples in secret. When the emperor discovered this, Valentine was condemned to death and beheaded. The year was 278. Or was it 270? “This Day in History” gives both years, without comment on the contradiction.
That’s just the beginning of the difficulties with the legends that developed regarding this martyr for love. Or these martyrs? According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, there are three different candidates for the true Valentine: one was a Roman priest of that name, another was bishop of Interamna (modern Terni, some 60 miles northeast of Rome), and a third was somewhere in Africa (no specifics known).
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Because of his martyrdom, the Catholic Church recognized Valentine as a saint. And then, because of his obscurity, the church backed off. In 1969, St. Valentine’s Day was removed from the General Roman Calendar of saints’ days, though local jurisdictions are still authorized to call him St. Valentine, if they wish.
That leaves us with Ash Wednesday to consider. It is the day Lent begins, with a church service and the priest’s thumbprint of ashes on the parishoner’s forehead, with this admonition: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
This idea comes from the Bible, of course. Here it is in the King James Version, still the English-language favorite:
Genesis 2.7: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.
Genesis 3.19: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Ecclesiastes 3.19-20: … for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
So what is a lover and a human being to do in the face of these extreme reminders on this day? Perhaps they should encourage us to make the most of the rose petals of love, ere they crumble into dust.
