![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
When was the Roman festival of Lupercalia held during the year?
Lupercalia, a fertility festival dedicated to the god Faunus, as well as to Romulus and Remus, legendary founders of Rome, began on the Ides (15th) of February. Part of the rituals involved young men going around slapping women and fields with goathide strips dipped in the blood of sacrificial animals. According to legend, another part of the festival involved a lottery system whereby all the city bachelors would draw the name of an unmarried woman out of an urn. The two would be paired for the year.
The Catholic Church declared Valentine's Day to be February 14th in the late 400s, and deemed the lottery to be un-Christian and had it banned. (BTW, St. Valentine's Day is no longer an official saint's feast in the Catholic church -- it was removed from the liturgical calendar in 1969.) Source: HistoryChannel.com .
Those guys were no fun at all.
Lupercalia, a fertility festival dedicated to the god Faunus, as well as to Romulus and Remus, legendary founders of Rome, began on the Ides (15th) of February. Part of the rituals involved young men going around slapping women and fields with goathide strips dipped in the blood of sacrificial animals. According to legend, another part of the festival involved a lottery system whereby all the city bachelors would draw the name of an unmarried woman out of an urn. The two would be paired for the year.
The Catholic Church declared Valentine's Day to be February 14th in the late 400s, and deemed the lottery to be un-Christian and had it banned. (BTW, St. Valentine's Day is no longer an official saint's feast in the Catholic church -- it was removed from the liturgical calendar in 1969.) Source: HistoryChannel.com .
Those guys were no fun at all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject