There were no fewer than three St. Valentines who were martyrs in the first three centuries of the Church, however very little is actually known about them. The name Valentine generically means, valens = "strength" or "virtue", and tenens = "holding", "possessing", which could be a description of this martyr's witness as one who held fast to the faith during persecution, as much as it could be a proper name. Here's a clip from the 13th century Golden Legend (a most popular hagiography on the saints, akin to Bulter's Lives of the Saints) hosted over at Fordham: click here.
The St. Valentine commemoration disappeared from the missal with the reform of the calendar, presumably as an effort to trim some of the lesser-known and apparently-apocryphal saints in favor of those whose historical witness is more certain. Today's actual commemoration in the missal is for the sainted brothers of the East, Cyril and Methodius, February 14 being the date of the death of St. Cyril in 869.
In the old missal, the collect for the Valentine commemoration remains:
Præsta, quaesumus, omnípotens Deus:
ut, qui beáti Valentíni Mártyris tui natalítia cólimus, a cunctis malis
imminéntibus, eius intercessióne, liberémur. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, Filium tuum:
qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula
saeculorum.
Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we who honor the birth of the martyr St. Valentine into eternal life, may be freed from all evil that threatens us, through his intercession. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for the age of ages. Amen.
It's days like this where the Tridentine discipline of allowing multiple commemorations (up to three collects) would be most welcomed in our current ritual... three collect prayers could be offered, the first would be for the proper Lenten weekday, the next would be for the commemoration, and then the priest could even add a third prayer, for instance, for the pope (which would be very fitting to use again and again over the coming weeks) or for another lesser, devotional purpose.
--Fr. Tom Donovan
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