Celebrated between February 13 and 15, Lupercalia was a pagan fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, and Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome.

Eventually, Lupercalia was banned and Feb. 14 was deemed as "St. Valentine's Day." When was love first associated with the holiday? In the Middle Ages, ...

According to NPR, Lupercalia was a sacrificial ritual and festival honoring Lupa, the she-wolf who nursed and sheltered Romulus and Remus. The event was also meant to appease Lupercus, ...

Noel Lenski, a Yale University historian, pointed to the seasonal and thematic connections between Lupercalia and modern Valentine’s Day. Both are erotic festivals, in a sense, ...

Pope Gelasius I is said to have replaced the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia with St. Valentine's Day in the fifth century. The first mass-produced valentines were sold in the 1840s.

The connections to the Lupercalia were invented by scholars in the 18th and 19th century to account for the romantic practices of St Valentine's day of which they did not know the origin (and I am ...

Noel Lenski, a Yale University historian, pointed to the seasonal and thematic connections between Lupercalia and modern Valentine’s Day. Both are erotic festivals, in a sense, ...

Lupercalia: Valentine's Day pagan connections. Lupercalia was a debaucherous festival that celebrated the coming of spring. It included animal sacrifices and drunken revelry to honor Faunus, the ...

But even after Lupercalia was no longer celebrated and Saint Valentine was beaten and beheaded, it took quite some time for the holiday to turn romantic. Valentine's Day Feb 11, 2022 ...

Pope Gelasius I is said to have replaced the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia with St. Valentine's Day in the fifth century. The first mass-produced valentines were sold in the 1840s.