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By Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev
For ten years now, in mid-February, a special topic has appeared in ecclesiastical periodicals and parish sermons: the topic is that of a warning against celebrating "Saint Valentine's Day." They say it's not our holiday...
It's strange: the holiday itself is not called "Stakhanovite Day" or "Forestry and Timber Industry Worker's Day." It has an ecclesiastical name and reminds us of a Christian saint - and yet the Church calls not to celebrate him?
Let's first look at the formal reason for the holiday. The reason that is reflected in its name.
Was there really such a saint?
Yes, Saint Valentine lived in the Italian city of Terni in the 3rd century and was executed on February 14, 270.
Is he "our" Saint or a Catholic one?
Ours. All the saints who accomplished their feat in Western Europe before 1054, that is, before the date of the schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, are ours, Orthodox saints.
But maybe, although he lived in Orthodox times, only Catholics realized his holiness and he is a Saint only by Catholic but not Orthodox criteria?
No, Valentine was canonized long before the break between the West and the East. It is usually said that this canonization was performed by Pope Gelasius in 494.
It is possible that Valentine, commemorated on February 14, is already known to our calendar - as the Holy Martyr Valentine of Interama (or Italy); his memory is celebrated on August 12 according to the new style (July 30 according to the old style).
But it may well be that this is another person, about whom we have known nothing until now.
There is nothing strange about this: even in the veneration of the most famous saint - Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker - there was a "mismatch". The text of his life combines episodes from the lives of two undoubtedly different people, one of whom lived at the turn of the 3rd-4th centuries, and the other in the middle of the 6th century. The first suffered under the pagan emperor Diocletian and was already quite mature when he attended the First Ecumenical Synod in 325. But he could not attend services at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (built in the 6th century) - although the author of the life describes his hero to such a pious act.
The hagiographic account of Saint Nicholas of Myra's journey to the Holy Land is also unreliable. Blessed Symeon Metaphrastes in the 10th century describes his pilgrimage to Palestine as follows: "The Saint went to the Lord's Sepulcher and to the honorable Golgotha, where the cross of our salvation was dug up. At night he approached the tree of the holy cross, and the sacred gates opened before him by themselves." But already in the 19th century, the outstanding Russian researcher of Near Eastern ecclesiastical antiquities, Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin), wrote: “Whoever has read attentively the life of Saint Nicholas, included in our Chetya-Minei, cannot hide from him one historical inconsistency encountered in it. It is said there that the great Saint of God, while still a priest, went to Palestine to venerate the holy places, ascended Golgotha, and once entered the holy church (of course, the Resurrection) through the gates that opened for him. Then, upon returning home to Lycia, he was elevated to the archbishop's throne of the city of Myra, and only after all this did he become a confessor of the Christian faith under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian. But the holy places of Jerusalem were brought to general knowledge under the emperor Constantine and the Church of the Resurrection was consecrated only on September 13, 335, i.e. 30 years after the reign of Diocletian and Maximian."
Since the Saint's journey to Palestine was always dated to around 300, i.e. the time when the cross had not yet been found by the holy empress Helen, and the Church of the Resurrection of the Lord had not yet been built, the chronology of the life of Archbishop Nicholas was in clear contradiction with Church history.
The situation became clear after the discovery of ancient texts of the lives of Saint Nicholas of Pharroa, who became archbishop of the Lycian city of Pinara under Emperor Justinian I and died on December 10, 564. They describe in great detail his two journeys to the Holy Land. It turned out that the pilgrimage of Saint Nicholas of Pinara to Palestine was entirely transferred to the lives of Saint Nicholas of Myra.
“The mixing of the lives of the two Saints Nicholas' led to the aforementioned historical inconsistency… The addition of episodes from the life of Nicholas of Pinara to the life of Saint Nicholas of Myra was undertaken in the first half of the 10th century by some anonymous authors (“Mixed Life”, “Lycian-Alexandrian Life”, etc.). The version of Blessed Symeon Metaphrastes is based on the canonical life of Saint Nicholas, compiled in the 8th-9th centuries by Archimandrite Michael, to which fragments from the life of Nicholas of Pinara were added (historian A. Yu. Vinogradov discovered an example of such a combination before Metaphrastes in Cod. Mosq. GIM gr. 378, 11th century, pp. 36-54). The high literary merits of Metaphrastes' life of Saint Nicholas made his version the most popular and authoritative, thereby involuntarily 'legitimizing' the erroneous confusion of the lives of the two Nicholases for a millennium."
As the research of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin), conducted by him in 1869-1873, showed, both the names of the parents - Theophanes (Epiphanios) and Nonna, as well as Nicholas's uncle - were borrowed from the life of Saint Nicholas of Pinara.
The oldest texts of the life of Saint Nicholas of Pinara date back to the 6th century. The first of them was discovered in the Vatican Library in the 17th century by Cardinal Falconi. The deeds and miracles of Nicholas of Pinara turned out to be different from those in the life of Nicholas of Myra. However, the biography of Nicholas of Pinara reported on his parents with the names Epiphanios and Nonna, and his uncle, Bishop Nicholas of Pinara, who built the Sion Monastery. The episode about the three-hour standing of the infant Nicholas in the baptismal font also came from there.
These coincidences led Falconi to incorrect conclusions. The Cardinal decided that there was only one saint - Nicholas of Myra in the 6th century under Emperor Justinian. Only two hundred years later, Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin) established the truth of the existence of two Nicholases, the Saints of Lycia. He wrote: "One can marvel at how two persons, both famous, merged in the popular imagination, and then in the ecclesiastical memory, into one venerable and holy-blessed image, but one cannot deny the fact... So there were two Saints Nicholas of Lycia."
And in the case of the veneration of Saint Valentine, it may be that the memory of the more famous Saint absorbed the memory of other saints with the same name.
The veneration of saints can be different - it can be universal, and it can be local. We do not know all the saints who are venerated in this or that monastery in Georgia...
In addition, if it was Pope Gelasius who actually appointed the commemoration of Saint Valentine on February 14, then this act of his coincided with the break in relations between the Roman Church and the Church of Constantinople (from 484 to 519). These were the years of the so-called "Acacian schism." The truth in this schism was on the side of Rome, which was eventually recognized by Constantinople. So the decisions made in Rome at that time simply did not reach the Christian East. But this did not stop them from being Orthodox decisions.
In recent decades, the liturgical calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church has included many memorials of saints who lived in the Western world in the first Christian millennium. Until recently, our calendars knew nothing about Saint Turbo of Langres - and now his name is there.
Here are the books that tell us about the Orthodox Saints of the West: Archpriest Alexander Shabanov, Saint Patrick, Bishop and Enlightener of Ireland (Tver, 2000); Archpriest Alexander Shabanov, Saint Brendan the Navigator (Tver, 2001); Mark Omelnitsky, Lives of Three English Saints (Oswald, Edmund, Swithin) (Moscow, 1997); Mark Omelnitsky, The Image of the Saint in the Anglo-Saxon Literary and Hagiographic Tradition: Based on the Life of Saint Guthlac (Moscow, 1997); Vladimir Moss, The Collapse of Orthodoxy in England (Tver, 1999).
Finally, on the TVS TV channel website at http://www.tvs.tv/news/article.asp?id=220 you can see a photograph of Patriarch Alexy II kissing the reliquary with the relics of Saint Valentine.
Here is the official information: "During the meeting held on January 15, 2003, in the working residence of the Patriarch on Chisty Lane, a particle of the relics of Saint Valentine of Interama was donated to the Russian Orthodox Church. The ceremony was attended by Bishop of Terni Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, Vicar General of the Diocese Monsignor Antonio Maniero, Vice-Mayor of Terni Eros Brega, President of the Province of Terni Bruno Semproni, and other members of the Italian delegation. The idea of donating to the Russian Orthodox Church a particle of the relics of the patron saint of the city of Terni, Saint Valentine, who died a martyr's death in the 3rd century, was expressed by Bishop Vincenzo Paglia after the meeting held in July 2001 between the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the leadership of the Catholic peacemaking charity organization 'Community of Sant'Egidio', whose spiritual father is Monsignor V. Paglia. Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia called the fact that the transfer of the particle of Saint Valentine's relics is taking place on the day of the celebration of the memory of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, the 100th anniversary of whose canonization the Russian Orthodox Church will celebrate this year, symbolic. Having thanked Bishop Vincenzo Paglia for this gift, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus' announced that the reliquary with the particle of Saint Valentine's relics will be kept in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where every believer will be able to pray before this holy relic of the ancient undivided Christian Church. 'The 20th century has become a century of severe trials for the Russian Orthodox Church,' said His Holiness the Patriarch. 'We turn our prayers with hope to the martyrs of the first centuries of Christianity, who testified to the pagan world about the Savior, remaining faithful to Him even unto death. The history of the Church continues. In our time, many thousands of new martyrs and confessors of Russia have joined the host of God's saints. As centuries ago, the blood of the martyrs established and establishes the Church of Christ.' Patriarch Alexy, accepting the gift, noted that with great emotion he receives a particle of the relics of the holy martyr Valentine - a saint of the Undivided Church. 'I perceive this act of transferring a particle of the relics of the holy martyr Valentine as a spiritual act, an act that will help Russians, Orthodox believers in Russia, to pray, not only remembering the memory of the holy martyr Valentine, but to pray before a particle of his holy relics.'"
The memory of one and the same saint can be celebrated on different days in different parts of the Church. So it may well be that the same Saint Valentine, who is celebrated in Italy on February 14, is especially honored here six months later - on August 12. It may also be the case that the memory of one and the same saint is celebrated several times a year (let us recall the Summer and Winter Nicholas). Finally, the Church has the right to simply transfer the memory of a saint from one day to another.
Can the Orthodox Church accept a holiday that was not born in it? Our history has already given a positive answer to this question.
Victory Day, May 9, was born in the non-ecclesiastical history of Soviet Russia. But by the definition of the Bishops' Council of the Russian Church in 1994, it was established to hold a special annual commemoration of deceased soldiers and all those who died as martyrs during the war on Victory Day.
And it is already absolutely amazing that the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates "Spring Nicholas" - a holiday that is familiar only to Italian Catholics, but which the Orthodox Greeks do not have.
The holiday was established in honor of the "Transfer of the relics of Saint Nicholas from the city of Myra in Lycia to the city of Bari."
That it was a holiday for the people of Bari is beyond doubt. But did the people of Saint Nicholas's hometown, Myra in Lycia, celebrate this event? Did they part with their holy relic voluntarily? And where were the relics transferred, not in a geographical sense, but in a confessional sense?
Myra is a city in what is now Turkey. Bari is an Italian city. Pre-revolutionary Orthodox historians rightly drew attention to the fact that in southern Italy at that time, at the end of the 11th century, there were still at least as many Greeks as Latins, and from this they concluded that even after being transferred to Italy, the relics of Saint Nicholas remained with the Orthodox.
Unfortunately, a comparison of dates does not allow us to accept this reassuring scheme. The relics have been in Bari since May 9, 1087. The rupture of relations between Rome and Constantinople occurred earlier, in 1054. In 1070, the Normans (allies of the Pope and enemies of the Greco-Russian army) captured Bari, and immediately Bishop Andrew of Bari (whose administration of the diocese falls in 1062-1078) transferred from the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Pope of Rome. Andrew's successor in the Bari cathedra, Urson (1078-1089), was ordained directly by Pope Gregory VII.
The worship in the south of Italy remained traditionally Greek for a long time, but in terms of canonical dependence and dogmatic unanimity, this region, as we see, was already connected with Rome 17 years before the transfer of the relics of Saint Nicholas there...
The feast of the transfer of the relics was first appointed by Pope Urban for 1090. This papal decision took place on October 1, 1089 (the Pope was in Bari at the invitation of the Norman dukes for the ordination of the new Bishop of Bari, Elijah, and for the consecration of the newly built Church of Saint Nicholas). In Rus', this holiday appeared in 1092.
So, the holiday was undoubtedly established by the Catholic Church and for a joyful occasion specifically for it.
Did the Orthodox voluntarily part with their relics? According to the recollections of the participants in the transfer, preserved in Italian chronicles, the Orthodox monks refused to give up the relics of Saint Nicholas and refused to accept ransom for them. Then they were simply tied up; 47 Bari residents attacked 4 monks. When the townspeople learned of the theft, they rushed in pursuit of the invaders with weapons in hand. To their misfortune, the Bari ships managed to sail away...
Medieval history knows many cases of armed seizure of holy places. It is clear that the Greeks have a sad memory of this event. But Rus' adopted the holiday that gladdened the hearts of Italian Catholics...
Why and how it adopted it is another question. We were interested in this story only in connection with the search for an answer to the question of whether the Orthodox Church can borrow a holiday established by Catholics. It turns out that it can. The Church dared to absorb even those innovations that arose in heretical communities. Another such example is the use of the baptismal Creed during the Liturgy: the singing of the Creed during the Liturgy was first introduced in 485 by the Monophysite Antiochian Patriarch Peter Mongus.
Finally, to find out whether the Russian Church's attitude to "Saint Valentine's Day" can be different and incontrovertible, we must also ask the question of whether the Church can take a non-Catholic and non-secular, but pagan holiday and reform it, discarding the pagan filth and filling a certain familiar date with its own content?
The first step towards the Christmas holiday was made at the beginning of the third century by heretics – the Basilidian Gnostics. They began to celebrate the day of the Baptism of the Lord on the 15th day of the month of Tubi (January 6). On this day they blessed the Nile. Christians were forced to give this holiday their own meaning, and the echo of that controversy can still be heard in our Theophany services: "You have set at liberty the generations of our nature; You did hallow the virginal Womb by Your Birth" - this is against the teaching of the Gnostics about childbirth as an act of intervention by an evil force. "All creation praises You, Who did manifest Yourself" - this assertion of Christ as the Creator is directed against the teaching of the Gnostics that the God-Creator of the Old Testament is the enemy of the good God-Savior of the New Testament. "For You were seen upon the earth, and did sojourn with men" - against the teaching that Christ only seemed to be a man, but did not become one in reality. "You also sanctified the streams of the Jordan, sending down your Holy Spirit from heaven" - against the teaching according to which Jesus became the Son of God only when He entered the Jordan. "And you crushed the heads of the serpents nesting there" - against the Gnostic idea, according to which Christ received the gift of knowledge in the Jordan from the serpent that deceived Eve in paradise.
It is said that "Saint Valentine's Day" itself was established in order to "break" pagan habits. During these days, the so-called "Lupercalia" (from lupus - wolf) were celebrated in Rome. In the sanctuary, arranged in a cave on the slope of the Palatine Hill and called Lupercal, a sacrifice was made: the "Luperci" priests slaughtered a goat (the animal most pleasant to the wolf's taste) and a dog (the animal most hated by the wolf). Then two naked youths (they were also called Luperci) approached the altar, and each of the two priests who performed the sacrifice applied a bloody knife to the forehead of one of the Luperci, and then wiped it with the white wool of a goat. Then the slaughtered animals were skinned and narrow belts, called "februa", were cut from their skins. Both Luperci would gird themselves with such a belt, clutch the bundles of other belts in their hands, run out of the cave naked and begin a ritual run around the Palatine Hill, whipping everyone who came their way with the belts. Not only did no one avoid these blows, but on the contrary, women and girls would expose their backs, shoulders and chests to the Luperci with cheerful laughter: it was believed that this would bring luck in love, make marriage happy and guarantee abundant offspring.
Incidentally, the name of the sacred belts of the Luperci - "februa" - also gave rise to the name of the month in the middle of which the celebration took place (and in the middle of which Valentine's Day would be celebrated): "februarius" - February.
Even in the time of Caesar, no one could really explain what the Lupercalia and the rituals associated with them were. Therefore, as always in such cases, everyone was satisfied with a legend. It was said that the Lupercalia festival was established by the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, in honor of the she-wolf who nursed them in a cave, and that they were the first Luperci. It is possible that this cult goes back to the veneration of Faun, the patron god of flocks. One of Faun's nicknames was "Lupercus," which literally meant "guardian from wolves," and the god himself was often depicted as a wolf. Sacrifices to Lupercus and the festival in his honor took place in mid-February, when the mating of cattle began, and the god was prayed to bless the reproduction of the flocks and protect them from wolves.
As we can see, the February festival in Rome has ancient roots. In any of its variations, love and fear, death and pain went hand in hand. It is not surprising that in the end, the memory of the Christian martyr was permeated with all these subjects.
Whether it was really Pope Gelasius who appointed the feast of Saint Valentine's Day on February 14 is unclear. It is certain that it was this pope who put an end to the celebration of Lupercalia in Rome. This pope is also remembered for issuing a decree limiting the circulation of apocrypha and strictly defining the framework of the biblical canon. And yet I am afraid that there are no documents that would allow us to assert that "in 496, by papal decree, Lupercalia was transformed into Valentine's Day, and Valentine, who gave his life for love, was canonized."
More definitively, we can evaluate the story that Saint Valentine secretly married lovers. This is certainly nothing more than a legend. A legend because it is based on an undeniable anachronism: in the time of Saint Valentine (in the third century), there simply was no special rite of an ecclesiastical wedding. "The ancient Church considered marriage a sacrament regardless of whether it was accompanied by a church ceremony... In ancient Rus', the wedding was a form of marriage for the upper class of the people and slowly penetrated to the lower classes (at the end of the 17th century)." And even more so, the marriage performed by a priest of a sect he despised and persecuted could not mean anything in the eyes of a pagan emperor.
But there is a law in religion: what people believe in becomes reality. Maybe the Apostle Andrew did not walk along the banks of the Dnieper and did not reach Valaam. But in Rus' they always believed that this is exactly how it was - and, therefore, the Apostle Andrew really became related to our land. Our prayers to him and his prayers for us created a stronger connection between us than a purely "historical" one.
There is also a law of logic: "from falsehood, anything follows." This means that even a correct conclusion can be obtained from an incorrect premise. If people believe that Saint Valentine was executed because he was a patron of lovers, and if these people, based on this belief, pray to Valentine for their loved ones - then even if this idea of theirs is historically unreliable, Saint Valentine still really prays for them.
It is interesting that when they try to contrast the “not our Valentine’s Day” with some Orthodox holiday that could be presented as a “feast of the holy patrons of lovers”, they usually suggest remembering Saints Peter and Febronia of Murom. But if you read their official life, then behind the general words (“being both saints and righteous people, they loved purity and chastity and were always merciful, fair and meek, ... both took monastic vows and died on the same day”), the story of their love does not appear at all. But there is a wonderful monument of Old Russian literature, “The Tale of Peter and Febronia” (early 16th century). It endows its characters with beautiful and understandable human traits ... But this story remained in the category of apocrypha and was not included in the circle of ecclesiastical reading.
As a result, the situation turned out to be very similar to the history of the cult of Saint Valentine in the West: in both places the cult is based on the memory of real people, revered by the Church as saints. In both places this memory was colored in folkloric tones, and in both places folk legends emphasized the human love of these saints. But this folkloric exaggeration did not prevent the Church from remembering Peter and Febronia as saints who loved each other.
So the belief of modern people in Saint Valentine as the patron saint of lovers is an indisputable fact, independent of any source studies.
Does the Church convince people who believe that they should pray to Saint Antipas for a toothache and to Saint John the Baptist for headaches? So why should the Church destroy the conviction of people who want to pray to our Saint for something much more important than a toothache or headache?
So, from a formal point of view, celebrating Saint Valentine on February 14 may well be accepted by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The question is whether such a reception is necessary.
February 14 is "Valentine's Day". Is this bad from the point of view of Orthodoxy? Does our Church consist only of monks? Is the monastic path considered to be the only saving and permissible one? Shouldn't falling in love be accompanied by prayer?
I understand that most of those who celebrate "Saint Valentine's Day" do not even think about praying to Valentine... But here is where the Church's word would be appropriate: how is it possible that on Valentine's Day one cannot light a candle to Valentine, cannot pray to him?! Since this tradition is only just emerging in Russia, it is changeable and flexible. And the Church could influence its formation not by grumbling, but by something else.
Ideally (missionary ideal) one could say: real "valentines" are those that are purchased and blessed in the church. And we could start by at least serving prayers to the Holy Martyr Valentine on February 14 for the increase of love. For this, we don't even need to wait for permission from the Synod: we can serve a prayer to Saint Nicholas or Saint George on any day - and not only on the days of their calendar memory.
At these prayers, we could explain to young people that Valentine's own love was, first of all, for Christ. That love and lust are not the same thing. That "to love" and "to use" are antonyms.
And the adult parishioners in this sermon could be called to pray for the preservation of our children in purity and for the granting to them the experience of true love. Both could be reminded that in difficult life situations, when you do not know how to build a relationship with a person, you can pray to the martyr Tryphon (his memory falls on February 14). And if you do not beg Saint Valentine to grant you strong and true love, then over time you will have to pray to Tryphon - the deliverer from the disease of drunkenness...
And in the end say: if you guys are really dear to each other, come again tomorrow. Tomorrow, February 15 - the day of the Reception, the Presentation of the Lord. Pray together for each other. After all, prayer is the maximum tension of the good will of a person wishing good to another person. If your eyes and the eyes of the person you love are directed at the same icon, another thread will connect you to each other. As the ancient ascetic Abba Dorotheos said, people are like points on a circle, the center of which is God. If people simply move along the circle, then, approaching one neighbor, they will move away from others. But if they move together toward the center, then the distance between them will also decrease.
This holiday can be bright. At least for some people, some couples. For someone, it will remain an excuse to savor another portion of dirt. But the ratio of the two depends on our missionary efforts. After all, even on Orthodox Pascha, someone gets drunk to the point of being a pig. Should we give up our Pascha? And on Theophany, someone tells fortunes and casts spells. Does this mean that we will also get dirty if we celebrate Theophany in our own way? Someone waits for Christmas only for the discounts on Christmas sales, but we wait for Christ.
There is no need for excessive humility, no need for hasty capitulations, no need to abandon our holy places if someone's unclean hand has touched them. We must not leave our holidays in the hands of pagans and shopkeepers, but fight to preserve (or return to) their Christian meaning.
Not much is required of us. Just say that on Saint Valentine's Day, churches are waiting for those who love and want to be loved. Smile at those who come. And pray with them.
All that is required of us is a kind look. This missionary program does not require money, reforms, or anything like that. A simple announcement on the church doors is enough: "February 14. Prayer service to Saint Tryphon and Saint Valentine of Interama." Young parishioners themselves will spread this news to the surrounding schools and universities. And it would also be good for the priest to be on duty in the church that day – waiting for the “Valentine’s callers” to talk to them and, perhaps, pray again…
Without offending or embarrassing his traditional parishioners, without changing their way of life and faith in any way, several young people can be brought to the Church through this day.
Even if there are only five such newcomers to the “Valentine’s call” – is that really not enough?
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
The memory of one and the same saint can be celebrated on different days in different parts of the Church. So it may well be that the same Saint Valentine, who is celebrated in Italy on February 14, is especially honored here six months later - on August 12. It may also be the case that the memory of one and the same saint is celebrated several times a year (let us recall the Summer and Winter Nicholas). Finally, the Church has the right to simply transfer the memory of a saint from one day to another.
Can the Orthodox Church accept a holiday that was not born in it? Our history has already given a positive answer to this question.
Victory Day, May 9, was born in the non-ecclesiastical history of Soviet Russia. But by the definition of the Bishops' Council of the Russian Church in 1994, it was established to hold a special annual commemoration of deceased soldiers and all those who died as martyrs during the war on Victory Day.
And it is already absolutely amazing that the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates "Spring Nicholas" - a holiday that is familiar only to Italian Catholics, but which the Orthodox Greeks do not have.
The holiday was established in honor of the "Transfer of the relics of Saint Nicholas from the city of Myra in Lycia to the city of Bari."
That it was a holiday for the people of Bari is beyond doubt. But did the people of Saint Nicholas's hometown, Myra in Lycia, celebrate this event? Did they part with their holy relic voluntarily? And where were the relics transferred, not in a geographical sense, but in a confessional sense?
Myra is a city in what is now Turkey. Bari is an Italian city. Pre-revolutionary Orthodox historians rightly drew attention to the fact that in southern Italy at that time, at the end of the 11th century, there were still at least as many Greeks as Latins, and from this they concluded that even after being transferred to Italy, the relics of Saint Nicholas remained with the Orthodox.
Unfortunately, a comparison of dates does not allow us to accept this reassuring scheme. The relics have been in Bari since May 9, 1087. The rupture of relations between Rome and Constantinople occurred earlier, in 1054. In 1070, the Normans (allies of the Pope and enemies of the Greco-Russian army) captured Bari, and immediately Bishop Andrew of Bari (whose administration of the diocese falls in 1062-1078) transferred from the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Pope of Rome. Andrew's successor in the Bari cathedra, Urson (1078-1089), was ordained directly by Pope Gregory VII.
The worship in the south of Italy remained traditionally Greek for a long time, but in terms of canonical dependence and dogmatic unanimity, this region, as we see, was already connected with Rome 17 years before the transfer of the relics of Saint Nicholas there...
The feast of the transfer of the relics was first appointed by Pope Urban for 1090. This papal decision took place on October 1, 1089 (the Pope was in Bari at the invitation of the Norman dukes for the ordination of the new Bishop of Bari, Elijah, and for the consecration of the newly built Church of Saint Nicholas). In Rus', this holiday appeared in 1092.
So, the holiday was undoubtedly established by the Catholic Church and for a joyful occasion specifically for it.
Did the Orthodox voluntarily part with their relics? According to the recollections of the participants in the transfer, preserved in Italian chronicles, the Orthodox monks refused to give up the relics of Saint Nicholas and refused to accept ransom for them. Then they were simply tied up; 47 Bari residents attacked 4 monks. When the townspeople learned of the theft, they rushed in pursuit of the invaders with weapons in hand. To their misfortune, the Bari ships managed to sail away...
Medieval history knows many cases of armed seizure of holy places. It is clear that the Greeks have a sad memory of this event. But Rus' adopted the holiday that gladdened the hearts of Italian Catholics...
Why and how it adopted it is another question. We were interested in this story only in connection with the search for an answer to the question of whether the Orthodox Church can borrow a holiday established by Catholics. It turns out that it can. The Church dared to absorb even those innovations that arose in heretical communities. Another such example is the use of the baptismal Creed during the Liturgy: the singing of the Creed during the Liturgy was first introduced in 485 by the Monophysite Antiochian Patriarch Peter Mongus.
Finally, to find out whether the Russian Church's attitude to "Saint Valentine's Day" can be different and incontrovertible, we must also ask the question of whether the Church can take a non-Catholic and non-secular, but pagan holiday and reform it, discarding the pagan filth and filling a certain familiar date with its own content?
The first step towards the Christmas holiday was made at the beginning of the third century by heretics – the Basilidian Gnostics. They began to celebrate the day of the Baptism of the Lord on the 15th day of the month of Tubi (January 6). On this day they blessed the Nile. Christians were forced to give this holiday their own meaning, and the echo of that controversy can still be heard in our Theophany services: "You have set at liberty the generations of our nature; You did hallow the virginal Womb by Your Birth" - this is against the teaching of the Gnostics about childbirth as an act of intervention by an evil force. "All creation praises You, Who did manifest Yourself" - this assertion of Christ as the Creator is directed against the teaching of the Gnostics that the God-Creator of the Old Testament is the enemy of the good God-Savior of the New Testament. "For You were seen upon the earth, and did sojourn with men" - against the teaching that Christ only seemed to be a man, but did not become one in reality. "You also sanctified the streams of the Jordan, sending down your Holy Spirit from heaven" - against the teaching according to which Jesus became the Son of God only when He entered the Jordan. "And you crushed the heads of the serpents nesting there" - against the Gnostic idea, according to which Christ received the gift of knowledge in the Jordan from the serpent that deceived Eve in paradise.
It is said that "Saint Valentine's Day" itself was established in order to "break" pagan habits. During these days, the so-called "Lupercalia" (from lupus - wolf) were celebrated in Rome. In the sanctuary, arranged in a cave on the slope of the Palatine Hill and called Lupercal, a sacrifice was made: the "Luperci" priests slaughtered a goat (the animal most pleasant to the wolf's taste) and a dog (the animal most hated by the wolf). Then two naked youths (they were also called Luperci) approached the altar, and each of the two priests who performed the sacrifice applied a bloody knife to the forehead of one of the Luperci, and then wiped it with the white wool of a goat. Then the slaughtered animals were skinned and narrow belts, called "februa", were cut from their skins. Both Luperci would gird themselves with such a belt, clutch the bundles of other belts in their hands, run out of the cave naked and begin a ritual run around the Palatine Hill, whipping everyone who came their way with the belts. Not only did no one avoid these blows, but on the contrary, women and girls would expose their backs, shoulders and chests to the Luperci with cheerful laughter: it was believed that this would bring luck in love, make marriage happy and guarantee abundant offspring.
Incidentally, the name of the sacred belts of the Luperci - "februa" - also gave rise to the name of the month in the middle of which the celebration took place (and in the middle of which Valentine's Day would be celebrated): "februarius" - February.
Even in the time of Caesar, no one could really explain what the Lupercalia and the rituals associated with them were. Therefore, as always in such cases, everyone was satisfied with a legend. It was said that the Lupercalia festival was established by the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, in honor of the she-wolf who nursed them in a cave, and that they were the first Luperci. It is possible that this cult goes back to the veneration of Faun, the patron god of flocks. One of Faun's nicknames was "Lupercus," which literally meant "guardian from wolves," and the god himself was often depicted as a wolf. Sacrifices to Lupercus and the festival in his honor took place in mid-February, when the mating of cattle began, and the god was prayed to bless the reproduction of the flocks and protect them from wolves.
As we can see, the February festival in Rome has ancient roots. In any of its variations, love and fear, death and pain went hand in hand. It is not surprising that in the end, the memory of the Christian martyr was permeated with all these subjects.
Whether it was really Pope Gelasius who appointed the feast of Saint Valentine's Day on February 14 is unclear. It is certain that it was this pope who put an end to the celebration of Lupercalia in Rome. This pope is also remembered for issuing a decree limiting the circulation of apocrypha and strictly defining the framework of the biblical canon. And yet I am afraid that there are no documents that would allow us to assert that "in 496, by papal decree, Lupercalia was transformed into Valentine's Day, and Valentine, who gave his life for love, was canonized."
More definitively, we can evaluate the story that Saint Valentine secretly married lovers. This is certainly nothing more than a legend. A legend because it is based on an undeniable anachronism: in the time of Saint Valentine (in the third century), there simply was no special rite of an ecclesiastical wedding. "The ancient Church considered marriage a sacrament regardless of whether it was accompanied by a church ceremony... In ancient Rus', the wedding was a form of marriage for the upper class of the people and slowly penetrated to the lower classes (at the end of the 17th century)." And even more so, the marriage performed by a priest of a sect he despised and persecuted could not mean anything in the eyes of a pagan emperor.
But there is a law in religion: what people believe in becomes reality. Maybe the Apostle Andrew did not walk along the banks of the Dnieper and did not reach Valaam. But in Rus' they always believed that this is exactly how it was - and, therefore, the Apostle Andrew really became related to our land. Our prayers to him and his prayers for us created a stronger connection between us than a purely "historical" one.
There is also a law of logic: "from falsehood, anything follows." This means that even a correct conclusion can be obtained from an incorrect premise. If people believe that Saint Valentine was executed because he was a patron of lovers, and if these people, based on this belief, pray to Valentine for their loved ones - then even if this idea of theirs is historically unreliable, Saint Valentine still really prays for them.
It is interesting that when they try to contrast the “not our Valentine’s Day” with some Orthodox holiday that could be presented as a “feast of the holy patrons of lovers”, they usually suggest remembering Saints Peter and Febronia of Murom. But if you read their official life, then behind the general words (“being both saints and righteous people, they loved purity and chastity and were always merciful, fair and meek, ... both took monastic vows and died on the same day”), the story of their love does not appear at all. But there is a wonderful monument of Old Russian literature, “The Tale of Peter and Febronia” (early 16th century). It endows its characters with beautiful and understandable human traits ... But this story remained in the category of apocrypha and was not included in the circle of ecclesiastical reading.
As a result, the situation turned out to be very similar to the history of the cult of Saint Valentine in the West: in both places the cult is based on the memory of real people, revered by the Church as saints. In both places this memory was colored in folkloric tones, and in both places folk legends emphasized the human love of these saints. But this folkloric exaggeration did not prevent the Church from remembering Peter and Febronia as saints who loved each other.
So the belief of modern people in Saint Valentine as the patron saint of lovers is an indisputable fact, independent of any source studies.
Does the Church convince people who believe that they should pray to Saint Antipas for a toothache and to Saint John the Baptist for headaches? So why should the Church destroy the conviction of people who want to pray to our Saint for something much more important than a toothache or headache?
So, from a formal point of view, celebrating Saint Valentine on February 14 may well be accepted by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The question is whether such a reception is necessary.
February 14 is "Valentine's Day". Is this bad from the point of view of Orthodoxy? Does our Church consist only of monks? Is the monastic path considered to be the only saving and permissible one? Shouldn't falling in love be accompanied by prayer?
I understand that most of those who celebrate "Saint Valentine's Day" do not even think about praying to Valentine... But here is where the Church's word would be appropriate: how is it possible that on Valentine's Day one cannot light a candle to Valentine, cannot pray to him?! Since this tradition is only just emerging in Russia, it is changeable and flexible. And the Church could influence its formation not by grumbling, but by something else.
Ideally (missionary ideal) one could say: real "valentines" are those that are purchased and blessed in the church. And we could start by at least serving prayers to the Holy Martyr Valentine on February 14 for the increase of love. For this, we don't even need to wait for permission from the Synod: we can serve a prayer to Saint Nicholas or Saint George on any day - and not only on the days of their calendar memory.
At these prayers, we could explain to young people that Valentine's own love was, first of all, for Christ. That love and lust are not the same thing. That "to love" and "to use" are antonyms.
And the adult parishioners in this sermon could be called to pray for the preservation of our children in purity and for the granting to them the experience of true love. Both could be reminded that in difficult life situations, when you do not know how to build a relationship with a person, you can pray to the martyr Tryphon (his memory falls on February 14). And if you do not beg Saint Valentine to grant you strong and true love, then over time you will have to pray to Tryphon - the deliverer from the disease of drunkenness...
And in the end say: if you guys are really dear to each other, come again tomorrow. Tomorrow, February 15 - the day of the Reception, the Presentation of the Lord. Pray together for each other. After all, prayer is the maximum tension of the good will of a person wishing good to another person. If your eyes and the eyes of the person you love are directed at the same icon, another thread will connect you to each other. As the ancient ascetic Abba Dorotheos said, people are like points on a circle, the center of which is God. If people simply move along the circle, then, approaching one neighbor, they will move away from others. But if they move together toward the center, then the distance between them will also decrease.
This holiday can be bright. At least for some people, some couples. For someone, it will remain an excuse to savor another portion of dirt. But the ratio of the two depends on our missionary efforts. After all, even on Orthodox Pascha, someone gets drunk to the point of being a pig. Should we give up our Pascha? And on Theophany, someone tells fortunes and casts spells. Does this mean that we will also get dirty if we celebrate Theophany in our own way? Someone waits for Christmas only for the discounts on Christmas sales, but we wait for Christ.
There is no need for excessive humility, no need for hasty capitulations, no need to abandon our holy places if someone's unclean hand has touched them. We must not leave our holidays in the hands of pagans and shopkeepers, but fight to preserve (or return to) their Christian meaning.
Not much is required of us. Just say that on Saint Valentine's Day, churches are waiting for those who love and want to be loved. Smile at those who come. And pray with them.
All that is required of us is a kind look. This missionary program does not require money, reforms, or anything like that. A simple announcement on the church doors is enough: "February 14. Prayer service to Saint Tryphon and Saint Valentine of Interama." Young parishioners themselves will spread this news to the surrounding schools and universities. And it would also be good for the priest to be on duty in the church that day – waiting for the “Valentine’s callers” to talk to them and, perhaps, pray again…
Without offending or embarrassing his traditional parishioners, without changing their way of life and faith in any way, several young people can be brought to the Church through this day.
Even if there are only five such newcomers to the “Valentine’s call” – is that really not enough?
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
