Bury me deep in love

The body of St. Valentine is buried in Dublin, in the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Whitefriar Street. Here’s how it happened.

A silver-tongued Carmelite named Fr. John Spratt was on a visit to Rome in 1835 when invited to preach at the famous Jesuit church, the Gesu. Such was the Irishman’s reputation for the eloquence that, “The elite of Rome flocked to hear him and he received many tokens of esteem from the doyens of the Church.” Among these was the 1,500-year-old body of St. Valentine, which he brought home in a box.
Lest anyone back in Dublin doubt Spratt’s tale, the man who handed Valentine over provided a letter of authentication.
“We, Charles, by the divine mercy, Bishop of Sabina of the Holy Roman Church, cardinal Odescalchi arch priest of the sacred Liberian Basilica, Vicar General of our most Holy Father the Pope and Judge in ordinary of the Roman Curia and of its districts, etc., etc. To all and everyone who shall inspect these our present letters, we certify and attest, that for the greater glory of the omnipotent God and veneration of his saints, we have freely given to the Very Reverend Father Spratt, Master of Sacred Theology of the Order of Calced Carmelites of the convent of that Order at Dublin, in Ireland, the blessed body of St. Valentine, martyr, which we ourselves by the command of the most Holy Father Pope Gregory XVI on the 27th day of December 1835, have taken out of the cemetery of St. Hippolytus in the Tiburtine Way, together with a small vessel tinged with his blood and have deposited them in a wooden case covered with painted paper, well closed, tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with our seals and we have so delivered and consigned to him, and we have granted unto him power in the Lord, to the end that he may retain to himself, give to others, transmit beyond the city (Rome) and in any church, oratory or chapel, to expose and place the said blessed holy body for the public veneration of the faithful.”
There’s no arguing with that.
The body had lately been discovered by workmen restoring the Church of St. Valentine on the Flaminian Way. (Dr. Donald Attwater’s doubly imprimatured “Dictionary of Saints” tells that this church had, in fact, been constructed over the grave, not of Valentine but of Saints Marius and Martha (feast-day: January 19) and their sons Audifaxc and Abachum, a Persian family massacred in Rome in the Third Century. Attwater adds that Valentine’s “supposed ‘acts’ seem to derive from those of SS. Marius and Martha.”)
How and by whom the unearthed remnants were identified as Valentine’s after mouldering in the clay for a millennium and a half is nowhere explained. Nor is there any satisfactory account of why Charles by the divine mercy etc had resolved that gifting them to Spratt would be suitable acknowledgement of his preacher-man skills. (Is it possible he were having a laugh?)
On November 10, 1836, the silk-ribboned box containing the remains was carried in solemn procession through Dublin to Whitefriar Street, where they were received by Archbishop Murray, five bishops, more than a hundred priests and “innumerable thousands” of the faithful, many weeping with joy.
A few years later, Fr. Spratt died. Interest in Valentine’s remains seemed suddenly, mysteriously to wane. The relics were put into storage.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that Valentine was returned to public display. An altar and shrine were constructed, to be found on the right-hand side of the church’s main door, featuring a statue commissioned by the archdiocese from a Ms. Irene Broe, depicting Valentine in red martyr’s vestments, holding a crocus in his hand. How Ms. Broe apprehended what Valentine looked like, I have no idea.
The man who ordered the remains retrieved and made available for veneration was Dr. Murray’s successor as Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. The idea occurred to Dr. McQuaid in 1951, around the time he was zapping the political career of Noel Browne, the health minister who had introduced the Mother and Child Bill, based on a notion that the State should look after its children. To Dr. McQuaid, this seemed an outrageous usurpation of the rights of the Church.
The Dublin diocese pioneered the practice of young couples visiting the shrine to pray to St. Valentine that their lives together would be suffused with the blessings that come from following Church teaching with regard to sexual relationships.
On each February 14, Valentine is brought out from beneath a side-altar and placed before the high altar for veneration at two special masses. The masses this year will be at 11.00am and 3.15pm. At each, there will be a sermon on relationships and a performance of The Blessing of Rings, for those about to be married. Go early. I’m told these occasions are invariably crowded.

Here’s a few Feb. 14 events which the surly among us might usefully mark.
On this day, Zahir al-Din Mohammed Babur Shah, intellectual, internationalist and founder of the Mogol dynasty, was born in 1483; alarmist and bad mathematician Thomas Malthus added one to the world’s population in 1766; ace Afro-American journalist and inspirational abolitionist Frederick Douglass first bawled against injustice in 1817. Brian Kelly, perfect dad in classic ‘60s TV smart-dolphin series Flipper; Teamsters’ Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, now concretely at rest under the airport flyover in Chicago adjacent to the scene of St. Valentine’s Day massacre; Tim Buckley, father of Jeff; and mullet-man and middling footballer Kevin Keegan all had their birthdays on February 14.
On February 14 1940, the first porpoise born in captivity saw the watery light of day in Marineland, Florida.
Sublime Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini died peacefully in 1571; Scottish explorer James Cook was killed by a stone thrown by a Hawaiian in 1779; celebrity Mafia boss Vito Genovese succumbed to cancer in a New York prison in 1969: all on February 14.
February 14 marks the beginning of Hunger Moon month, according to the calendar of the Plains Indians.
It was on February 14 that Henry V became the first English King excommunicated from the Catholic Church, by Gregory VII, who had absolved Henry II of the murder of Thomas Becket and later launched the Third Crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem, the consequences of which are with us to this day. On February 14 in 1130, Cardinal Pietro Pierleone (not many people know this) became the only Jew ever elected Pope.
In 1349, the Bishop of Stasbourg had 2,000 Jews burned to death in the market square. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s Importance Of Being Earnest opened in London. In 1951, Sugar Ray Robinson whipped Jake LaMotta to lift the middleweight title. In 1967, Aretha Franklin recorded ‘Respect’. In 1984, Elton John married Renate Blauel. In 1989, Robin Givens divorced Mike Tyson. In 1994, Jerry Garcia married Deborah Koons. All on February 14.

I should make it clear that I prefer the Carmelite insanity to the faux romance, commercial cynicism, saccharine sentimentality and sheer stupidity of the secular Valentine’s Day invented by card sharps and pushers of cholesterol-rich tooth-rot.