ztwoelve5x8l
Dołączył: 17 Mar 2011
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 Wysłany: Sob 7:44, 16 Kwi 2011 Temat postu: Wolves, Goats, Martyrs and War a History of Valent |
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Valentines Day is one of the maximum mystic of holidays, having seemed in many forms. But all “Valentine’s Days” have painted misgiving. In truth, afterward hundreds of years of offered reform, Christian observance came to an end when the Catholic Church purged St. Valentine’s Day from its almanac in 1969.
Still, the holiday continues to influence an year avalanche of cards, not to advert the hunk expense of chocolates, flowers and sometimes, pricier presents. What do we commemorate when we commemorate Valentine’s Day?
- Running with the Wolves
If you’ve ever researched the history of Valentines Day, you know it began with wolves and antique Spring magic. The premier example we know of starts with the tough antique shepherds and founders of Rome who panicked and respected the wolves that preyed above their flocks. Once a year, they held sacrifices to Lupercus, the Lord of shepherds, enemy of wolves, and friend of dogs. Other shepherds mashed to Faunus, who also defended shepherds but was portion goat.
The festival, called Lupercalia, was held during early spring, which since time immemorial has been a season for purification. All the ancients saw that in the winter, the world fell silence and covered itself in pearly. Late winter and early spring was the time for people purification also, to be emulated closely along fertility magic.
- Something Old, Something New
Rome still celebrated Lupercalia after it had matured and transform a great republic. In fact, all civic life came to a halt for the celebration.
Because of the Remus and Romulus fable, Lupercalia enjoyed magnificent adore. Sons of noblemen were nominated to be Lupercalian priests, alternatively luperci, and tasked with a digit of duties. Each year they sacrified a dog (for Lupercal) and a goat (for Faunus) by the bottom of a grotto at Palantine Hill. Wearing nothing but goat hide, they slit thongs from the skin and ran the perimeter of “old Rome,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],” slapping women with the sanguinary strips. Women put themselves forward for this, meaning to be purified and made fertile. (Our month of February, Febrarius, manner “month of purification.”) Afterward, Rome indulged in a love lottery in which young men drew young women’s names from a jar and became their “partners” for a time.
Eventually, the Roman upper-crust grew also cultivated to feel at ease with Lupercalia. Cicero sniffed that the luperci were:
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A definite brutal league of Lupercalian brothers, either expressly pastoral and ferocious, whose rural league was fashioned ahead culture and decrees.
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A certain politician made sport of Lupercalia's anachronistic atmosphere by dressing his luperci skin to work and haranging his guy senators.
Eventually, Lupercalia began to fall out of prefer, although Augustus revived it for a time in break off national patriotism.
- The Church Triumphant
The church is periodically vilified as its Lupercalian edits. It base the adore lottery unacceptable, for well as the luperci. But preferably than ban the fete aboveboard, it tried assimilation.
First, the love lottery was replaced with a high-minded version, where each male drew a saint instead of a girl and was invited to emulate that saint throughout the year. (This custom is sometimes observed today). Then the purification facet was re-clothed in a feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], scheduled for early February. As for fertility magic, the church shunned this totally, although an tin look traces of the refining and “greening” thrust in the spirit and chapel decorations of Lent.
As for the fourteenth of February, the church devoted the day to the Christian martyr, Valentine. Contrary to the sugared rumors namely have sprung up approximately him (or more accurately, them -- there were several St. Valentines), the saint virtually surely had nothing to do with love or romance.
- Knights in Shining Armor
Lupercalia had been well and truly squelched in Rome. But to the west and northwardly, where the Age of Chivalry won, Europeans could not let the tradition molder and with childlike
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