Well holy shit if it isnt a toddler holiday
Bishop Demetri of the Orthodox Research Institute, in a keynote address, states that "St. Valentine was a priest near Rome in about the year 270 A.D, a time when the church was enduring great persecution. His ministry was to help the Christians to escape this persecution, and to provide them the sacraments, such as marriage, which was outlawed by the Roman Empire at that time." [25] Contemporary records of Saint Valentine were most probably destroyed during the Diocletianic Persecution on early 4th century. [26] In the 5th or 6th century, a work called Passio Marii et Marthae published an invented story of martyrdom for Saint Valentine of Rome, probably by borrowing tortures that happened to other saints, as it was usually made in the literature of that period. [26][27] It states that St Valentine was persecuted as a Christian and interrogated by Roman Emperor Claudius II in person. Claudius was impressed by Valentine and had a discussion with him, attempting to get him to convert to Roman paganism in order to save his life. Valentine refused and tried to convert Claudius to Christianity instead. Because of this, he was executed. Before his execution, he is reported to have performed a miracle by healing Julia, the blind daughter of his jailer Asterius. The jailer's daughter and his forty-four member household (family members and servants) came to believe in Jesus and were baptized. [26] In addition to this, Saint Valentine is said to have performed clandestine Christian weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. The Roman Emperor Claudius II supposedly forbade this in order to grow his army, believing that married men did not make for good soldiers. According to legend, in order to "remind them of God's love and to encourage them to remain faithful Christians," Saint Valentine is said to have cut hearts from parchment, giving them to the soldiers and persecuted Christians, a possible origin of the widespread use of hearts on Saint Valentine's Day. [5][28] A later Passio repeated the legend, adding that Pope Julius I built a church over his sepulcre (it's a confusion with a 4th century tribune called Valentino who donated land to build a church at a time when Julius was a Pope). [27] The legend was picked up as fact by later martyrologies, starting by Bede's martyrology in the 8th century. [27] It was repeated in the 13th century, in Legenda Aurea. [29] The book expounded briefly the Early Medieval acta of several Saint Valentines, and this legend was assigned to the Valentine under 14 February.
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