Today is Valentine's Day.
But what does this story of Valentin have to do with the libertine world?
We will easily agree that it is not because one (or more) libertine and one (or more) libertine spend the evening together that necessarily the oboes will sound and the trumpets will sound to accompany them to the altar!
Love is certainly a noble feeling, but it is not necessarily Cupid who presides over our mysteries...!
This festival dates back to a time when the church, with growing power, strong in its morals and convictions, wanted to oppose pagan rites. She invented a commemoration of a certain Valentin de Terni, beheaded, then canonized for having secretly celebrated Catholic marriages, the date of which she fixed, in order to reduce them to silence, on the eve of the abominable Lupercalia, during which the Romans and the Romans engaged in fertility rituals. No luck, far from being bothered by it, they seized it, made it a libertine evening before the hour, with an atmosphere of which we would not even dare to dream, and Pope Gelasius 1st returned to his flock with his tail down.*
Later, this date will be the occasion for festivities and banquets during which couples are drawn and form for one night.