The Lupercalia festival was one of the most curious and popular in Rome, although we do not know exactly which divinity was honored in them: among the possibilities are Lupercus (as an epithet of Faun), Februus or Juno. In them, young elites offered goats and dogs and then ran through the city, naked and covered in oil, carrying the goat's skin in strips and whipping those they crossed in their race with them. These spankings were associated with fertility, and were especially “indicated” for women. Its origin seems to go back to the roots of Rome or beyond, and Cicero said that it was prior to civilization and laws.
It was celebrated on February 15, it was related to fertility and a certain erotic touch ... it seemed that the connection with the festival of lovers was clear. Furthermore, a letter (actually an open text) from B2B Email List Pope Gelasius I (492-496) is preserved in which he criticizes the fact that the Lupercalia were still celebrated , and prohibited them. Thus, Christianization seemed plausible. The small problem is that the theory, which emerged between the 18th and 19th centuries, has been repeated without paying much more attention to the subject. Furthermore, although Gelasius criticizes the festivals as degenerate and pagan, he does not seem to institute any other festival in their place. What's more, in the historic calendar of Polemio Silvio, in the 5th century, the Lupercalia still appear .
Before getting into that, in any case, we have to see who this saint, named Valentine, is. The first “lives” are medieval, with hagiographies that do not seem to respond to real martyrdom records. The stories seem to have been built between the 6th and 7th centuries, on the memory of a martyr, adding topics and fragments of martyrdom records. Even so, it seems that there is archaeological and textual evidence to think that in the 4th century there was already a cult of one or several saints named like that, and it seems that Pope Julius I (3rd century) built a basilica for him in Rome.