Tag Archives: William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Valentine’s Day: Martyrs & Birds, 2nd edition

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Feasts, Literature, Love

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CUPID OR L'AMOUR MOUILLÉ, BY WILLIAM-ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU (1825-1905)

Cupid or l’Amour mouillé, William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

Valentine’s Day

Greek and Roman Antiquity

Love has long been celebrated. In ancient Greece, the marriage of Jupiter to Hera was commemorated between mid-January and mid-February. As for the Romans, in mid-February, they held the festival of the Lupercalia. According to Britannica, the Lupercalia was

[t]he festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery.[i]

At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I replaced the Lupercalia with a Christian feast, the “Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” to be celebrated on the 2nd of February. It is said that, in 496, the Pope issued a decree that made the 14th of February the feast of at least one saint named Valentine. However, according to Britannica, “Valentine’s Day did not come to be celebrated as a day of romance from about the 14th century.”[ii]

At any rate, the Lupercalia was eventually replaced by Saint Valentine’s Day, celebrated on the 14th of February. The 14th of February is no longer a feast day in the Catholic Church. But it is a feast day in the Anglican Church. Moreover, Ireland and France have relics of St Valentine, Valentine of Terni in Dublin and an anonymous St Valentine in France.

Saints and Martyrs

There is conflicting information concerning saints named Valentine.  It would be my opinion that the only st Valentine we can associate with Valentine’s Day is the saint who slipped his jailor’s daughter a note worded “from your Valentine.”

In French, Valentine’s Day is still called la Saint-Valentin, which suggests that there is a saint and martyr named Valentin. In fact, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there may be three saints named Valentine:

  1. Valentine of Terni, the bishop of Interrama, now Terni, also a 3rd-century martyr buried on the Via Flaminia,
  2. a Valentine who suffered in Africa with several companions, and
  3. the Valentine who restored his jail keeper’s daughter’s sight and slipped her a note that read “From your Valentine,” the night before his martyrdom. If this Valentine is associated with Valentine’s Day, it is because of the note he slipped to his jail keeper’s daughter which read: “From your Valentine.” He would be our Valentine or St Valentine.

Valentine’s Day Cards: The Origin 

St Valentine, the third Valentine is mentioned, albeit inconspicuously, in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend. Moreover, the Roman Martyrology, “the Catholic Church‘s official list of recognized saints,” gives only one Saint Valentine, the martyr who was executed and buried on the Via Flaminia and whose feast day is 14th February. (Saint Valentine, Wikipedia.) This saint’s only link with St Valentine’s day is the note he slipped to his jailer’s daughter: “From your Valentine.” This note would be the origin of Valentine’s Day cards.

St Valentine was martyred about c. 270 CE, probably 269, by Roman emperor Claudius II Gothicus.[iii]  According to the emperor, married men were lesser soldiers.  This St Valentine could be Valentine of Rome. But it could also be that this Valentine, Valentine of Rome, is the same person as Valentine of Terni, a priest and bishop also martyred in the 3rd century CE and buried on the Via Flaminia. This view is not supported by the Encyclopædia Britannica.[iv]

If this saint is associated with Valentine’s Day, the note signed “From your Valentine” is the only link between a saint named Valentine and Valentine’s Day. The note constitutes the required romantic element.

The Romantic Element

Chaucer: the day birds mate
Le Roman de la Rose
tHE lADY AND THE uNICORN

As mentioned above, Saint Valentine’s Day was not the feast of lovers (i.e. people in love) until a myth was born according to which birds mated on February the 14th. This myth is probably quite ancient but it finds its relatively recent roots is Geoffrey Chaucer‘s (14th century) Parliament of Foules. Othon III de Grandson (1340 and 1350 – 7 August 1397) (Fr Wikipedia), a poet and captain at the court of England spread the legend to the Latin world in the 14th century. This legend is associated with the famous mille-fleurs, (thousand flowers) tapestry called La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn), housed in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Finally, Chaucer translated part of Le Roman de la Rose.

N.B. The first version of the Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton’s 1478 edition.  Caxton translated and printed The Golden Legend in 1483.

Dissemination


the Legend about birds mating
Othon III de Grandson
Charles d’Orléans
Chaucer: Roman de la rose

It would appear that Othon III de Grandson, our poet and captain, wrote a third of his poetry in praise of that tradition. Othon III de Grandson wrote:

  • La Complainte de Saint Valentin (I & II), or Valentine’s Lament,
  • La Complaincte amoureuse de Sainct Valentin Gransson (The Love Lament of St Valentine Gransson),
  • Le Souhait de Saint Valentin (St Valentine’s Wish),
  • and Le Songe Saint Valentin (St Valentine’s Dream). (See Othon III de Grandson [in French], Wikipedia.)

Knowledge of these texts was disseminated in courtly circles, the French court in particular, at the beginning of the 15th century, by Charles d’Orléans. At some point, Othon’s Laments were forgotten, but St Valentine’s Day was revived in the 19th century.

In short, St Valentine’s Day is about

  1. a martyr who, the night before his martyrdom, slipped a note to the lady he had befriended, his jailor’s blind daughter, signing it “From your Valentine.”
  2. It is about a legend, found in Chaucer‘s Parliament of Foules, according to which birds mate on the 14th of February.
  3. It is associated with an allegorical tapestry: La Dame à la licorne.
  4. It is about Othon III de Grandson (FR, Wikipedia), a poet and a captain who devoted thirty percent of his poetry to the traditions surrounding St Valentine’s Day.
  5. It is also about courtly love and, specifically, Le Roman de la Rose, part of which was translated into English by Geoffrey Chaucer.
  6. Finally, it is about Charles d’Orléans who circulated the lore about St Valentine in courtly circles in France.

There is considerable information in Wikipedia’s entry of St Valentine’s Day.  It was or has become a trans-cultural tradition.

RELATED ARTICLES

Happy Valentine’s Day

Folk Art Valentine, 1875

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[i] “Valentine’s Day”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2012 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/858512/Valentines-Day>.

[ii] “Saint Valentine”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/622028/Saint-Valentine>.

[iii] “Claudius II Gothicus”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/120521/Claudius-II-Gothicus>.

[iv] “Saint Valentine”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/622028/Saint-Valentine>.

 
Andreas Scholl sings Dowland‘s “Flow my Tears”
 
   
cupidangel
© Micheline Walker
14 February 2012
14 February 2015
WordPress
 

Manet, “Japonisme” and Modernism

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Art, Japonism

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640px-Hokusai_portraitKatsushika Hokusai, in an 1839 self-portrait (Photo credit: Hokusai, Wikipedia)

As of Édouard Manet’s “modernity,” there occurred a gradual decline of academic art. The nude women of Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) did not quite belong. Symbolism had therefore entered the visual arts. At first glance, this painting seemed a “realist” work, consistent with Gustave Courbet‘s art, but it wasn’t. The academicists, Alexandre Cabanel and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who excluded it from the Salon of 1863, the regular exhibition of Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts, must have sensed what Victor Hugo had sensed when he first read Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, (The Flowers of Evil.) Hugo called Baudelaire’s collection of poems a ‘nouveau frisson’ (a new shudder, a new thrill)[i] in literature. (See Les Fleurs du mal [The Flowers of Evil], Wikipedia.)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler‘s “Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl ” was also rejected by academicists. Whistler was introducing impressionism and Japonism, which, Whistler’s case, would be called the Anglo-Japanese style. After leaving the United States, Whistler spent some time in France, but soon settled in England.

Both Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Whistler’s Symphony in White were “different,” so both were shown at the 1863 Salon des Refusés.[ii]  Émile Zola stated that “[b] eauty [was] no longer an absolute, a preposterous universal standard,”[iii] and, in 1886, he published L’Œuvre (The Masterpiece), a novel inspired by the rejection of Manet’s “Masterpiece.” That same year, Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto.

Our Japanese artists are:

398px-23_-_The_Sea_off_Satta

394px-03_-_Sukiyagahsi

View of Mount Fuji from Satta Point in the Suruga Bay, published posthumously (1859)

Sukiyagahsi in the Eastern Capital, from “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” Utagawa Hiroshige, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)
 

Modernisme

Manet’s inclusion in a painting such as the deceitfully realist Déjeuner sur l’herbe of elements that did not seem to belong and did not belong, and Japonisme contributed to the ultimate acceptance of different styles, a multitude of “isms.” How else could Art Nouveau, Post-Impressionism (Van Gogh),[iv] Cubism (Picasso), Intimism,  (Modernism  [EN]), etc.have emerged? The unexpectedly enigmatic art of Manet and Japonism ushered in the degree of acceptance that characterizes modernism. In fact, Japonism was a tidal wave.

By the same token, there occurred an equally unexpected integration of various arts and crafts: musical, visual, etc. There was collaboration between stage decorators, composers, literary figures and various “artists.” Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes employed major artists, including Pablo Picasso. Russian painter Léon Bakst was the Ballets Russes’ stage- and costume designer. Sergei Diaghilev also employed soon-to-be major composers: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor Stravinsky, etc. (For lists of artists and musicians who worked for Diaghilev, see Ballets Russes, Wikipedia.)

In other words, although there had to be exceptions, beginning with Manet and Japonisme, the world of art broadened. Modernism, starting with Impressionism, inaugurated greater diversity. A list may be useful.

In other words, as I wrote at the beginning of this post, rule-governed academic art simply faded out. But there’s more…

“Views,” or the Japanese Hours

As well, some Japanese prints depicted “hours” of the day. In traditional Japan, hours had been associated with an animal. There were twelve hours: the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Hare, the Dragon, the Serpent, the Horse, the Sheep, the Monkey, the Rooster, the Dog and the Boar. (See Horloge japonaise traditionnelle, Wikipedia.) These prints reminded me of Benedict’s Canonical Hours. “Hours,” or equivalent observances, existed before Western monasticism. They in fact still exist, not only in Western culture, but also in other cultures and religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Janeism. (See Monasticism, Wikipedia.)

As for “Views” or “Famous Places” (meisho), they sometimes resemble genre art, or art portraying persons going about their daily activities. Hokusai‘s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fugi and Hiroshige‘s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, both meisho (“famous places”) pieces, bring to mind the miniatures of Jean de France’s Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, illuminated by the Limbourg brothers and showing the labours of the months. Hiroshige’s series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons, which takes us back to the calendar, no banal invention.

RELATED POSTS

 
HOKUSA~1
 

Netsuke-Workshop-large

Sarumaru Dayu, from the ‘Hyakunin Isshu Ubaga Etoki’
A Netsuke Worshop, from the ‘Hyakunin Isshu Ubaga Etoki’
Katsushika Hokusai
(Photo credit: Hokusai Wikipedia and Hokusai, The Complete Works)
(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)

_________________________

[i] Wikipedia (Manet) contains a fuller commentary.

[ii] “Frissonner” means to shiver.

[iii] There were other Salons des Refusés (1874, 1875, and 1886) but it did not become an annual exhibition. The 1863 Salon des refusés was decreed by Napoléon III. (See Salon des Refusés, Wikipedia)

[iv] According to Wikipedia, the “term [Post-Impressionism] was coined by British artist and art critic Roger Fry, in 1910, to describe the development of French art since Manet.”

Manet’s “Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863
(Photo credit: Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Wikipedia)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 758PX-~1 
   
© Micheline Walker
8 July 2013
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Related articles

Henri Matisse: an Eclectic Modernist

04 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by in Art

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The Maid, by Matisse

The Maid, by Matisse (1896)

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954; aged 84) was one of the most famous artists of the 20th century.  He was trained at the Académie Julian where he was a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau.  He was also a student of Symbolist Gustave Moreau at the École des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris.  His first works are therefore traditional.  For instance, the above painting is a genre painting.  Genre paintings show people engaged in every day activities.  Matisse’s Maid, is in fact reminiscent of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin.  Matisse was also influenced by Nicolas Poussin (17th century) and Antoine Watteau (18th century).

As an academic painter, Matisse earned recognition from the start.  In 1896, the year he painted his Maid, he was elected an associate member of the Salon – academic – society.  Moreover, his Woman Reading (1894), shown in the gallery below, was purchased by the government.  However, Matisse’s artistic orientation broadened when he visited Australian artist John Peter Russell who had settled with his wife at Belle-Île, off the coast of Brittany.  Russell knew Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, which could explain the Fauvist period of Matisse’s life.  Fauvism is characterized by the use of vivid colours.  But, generally speaking, Matisse was an eclectic modernist.  His training as an academic painter served him well, as did the year he spent in England studying the works of J. M. W. Turner.  Matisse’s paintings also reflect the influence of Japanese and Islāmic art but, above all, they stem from an inner and very personal vision.  Artists are influenced by what they are seeking.

Fauvism: Le Salon d’automne, 1905

However, Matisse is linked with an art movement called Fauvism.  Following his trip to Belle-Île, Matisse turned to vibrant colours.  In 1905, he showed Woman with a Hat at the Salon d’Automne.  The Salon d’Automne is an annual art exhibition held in Paris France since 1903.  Woman with a Hat, a portrait of his wife Amélie, brought criticism to Matisse.  After visiting the Salon d’Automne “Paris critic Louis Vauxcelles called the group les fauves (“the wild beasts”), and thus Fauvism, the first of the important “isms” in 20th-century painting, was born.  Almost immediately Matisse became its acknowledged leader.”[i]  Other “fauvistes” are André Derain, its co-founder, and Maurice de Vlaminck.

Woman with a Hat, 1905

Woman with a Hat, 1905

By 1905, “Matisse’s studies led him to reject traditional renderings of three-dimensional space and to seek instead a new picture space defined by movement of colour. He exhibited his famous Woman with the Hat (1905) at the 1905 exhibition. In this painting, brisk strokes of colour—blues, greens, and reds—form an energetic, expressive view of the woman. The crude paint application, which left areas of raw canvas exposed, was appalling to viewers at the time.”[ii]  Matters were remedied when Gertrude Stein and brother Leo bought the painting which is now the property of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

The foremost patron and promoter of Henri Matisse’s art was Sarah Stein, Michael Stein’s wife.  As for Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) and Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967), they had a salon, 27, rue de Fleurus, to which artists and art collectors flocked on an appointed day, Saturday I believe.  In 1928, when he was composing An American in Paris, George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 –  July 11, 1937) noted that “[his] purpose here [was] to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere.” (See An American in Paris, Wikipedia.)  In the 1920s, Gershwin had been a student of famed pianist, composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger (16 September 1887 – 22 October 1979).  

Americans in Paris: Gertrude Stein & brothers 

At that time in the history of art, the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, the beau monde of the United States, Hemingway and others, lived in Paris, some, on an almost permanent basis, others, as frequent visitors.  The Cone (Kahn – Guggenheimer) sisters, Claribel and Etta, visited Paris at every chance and were generous patrons and collectors of modern art.  Ironically, the success of modernist artists in France is inextricably linked to America’s Gilded Age and the years preceding the Great Depression.  Matisse would soon break from Fauvism and adopt black as a colour.  However, as of his Woman with a Hat and the support of Paris’ American colony, he had become an established artist, which gave him some freedom.  He lived in relative affluence for the rest of his life, wintering in southern France and traveling.

Alice B. Toklas

On a sadder and somewhat extraneous note, among possessions Matisse’s first American patron, Gertrude Stein, bequeathed to Alice B. Toklas, were works of art, including Picassos.  Because Gertrude and Alice were not married, the Stein family repossessed her collection when its value started to rise.  According to Wikipedia, “Stein’s relatives took action to claim them, eventually removing them from Toklas’s home while she was away on vacation and placing them in a bank vault.” (See Alice B. Toklas, Wikipedia.)  Alice was not compensated and died in poverty, which should not have been the case.  However, she is buried next to Gertrude in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Matisse’s Last Days

Beginning in 1941, Matisse was in poor health and confined to a bed or a wheelchair.  He continued to paint sometimes using a stick to which a pencil or brush was attached.  He was cared for “by a faithful Russian woman who had been one of his models in the early 1930s, he lived in a large studio in the Old Hôtel Regina at Cimiez, overlooking Nice.”[iii]

Tiny Gallery

(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)

branch-of-lillacs-1914Crockery on a Table

Woman Reading

44135-004-8760E58D

 
Branch of Lilacs, 1914
Crockery on Table, 1900
Woman Reading, 1896 (bought by the government)
Luxe 1, 1907 
 
Photo credit: Google and Wikipaintings (Lilacs)

_________________________

[i] “Henri Matisse”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 03 Apr. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/369401/Henri-Matisse>.

[ii] “Fauvism”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 03 Apr. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/202866/Fauvism>.

[iii] “Henri Matisse”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 03 Apr. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/369401/Henri-Matisse>.

Not only has Philip Scott Johnson made the lovely video we saw on 3 April 2013, on Picasso, but he has made a series of videos, one of which is on Matisse.  The music is Debussy‘s Arabesque No. 1 in E Major, performed by Peter Schmalfuss, piano.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

© Micheline Walker
April 4, 2013
WordPress

Jean Racine, Gabriel Fauré & Alexandre Cabanel: a Canticle

06 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by in Art, Literature, Music, The Human Condition

≈ 5 Comments

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Phèdre, by Alexandre Cabanel (1880)

Alexandre Cabanel  (28 September 1823 – 23 January 1889) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jean Racine’ Phèdre

Jean Racine (22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699) is the foremost dramatist (tragedy) of 17th-century France.  Racine is best known for his tragedies the most powerful of which may be Phaedra EN (Phèdre FR) which premiered 1 on January 1677, at l’Hôtel de Bourgogne, the best venue in Paris.

In Greek mythology, Phaedra is the daughter of Pasiphaë, the granddaughter of Helios, the personification of the Sun, and the daughter of Minos, king of Crete and the son of Zeus.  She is married to Theseus, the founding hero of Athens, who slayed the Minotaur, aided by Ariadne, Phaedra’s sister.  Ariadne gave Theseus a thread (le fil d’Ariane) to guide him to the Minotaur, was enclosed in the Cretan labyrinth.  The Minotaur is the child of Pasiphaë and a bull and, therefore, a half-brother to Phaedra and her sister Ariadne.  As for the bull, he may be the Sacred Bull, a White Bull. Europa was seduced by Zeus disguised as a bull. (See Europa, Wikipedia.)

Europa and the Bull - Red-Figure Pottery, Stamnos, Tarquinia Museum, circa 480 BCE (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

Europa and the Bull, Greek Red-Figure Pottery, circa 480 BCE (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

In Racine’s tragedy, Theseus, Phèdre’s husband, has a son by a previous marriage, Hippolytus.  During a lenghty absence, it is reported that Theseus has died. Phaedra, who has fallen in love with Hippolytus, tells him she loves him.  Hippolytus is horrified.  However, Theseus has not died.  When he returns home, a jealous Phaedra—she has learned that Hippolytus loves Aricie—tells Theseus that she was seduced by Hippolytus.

Theseus calls on Poseidon (Neptune), who has promised to grant him wishes, and asks him to avenge him.  A monster comes out of the sea and kills an innocent Hippolytus who is riding on a horse.  Guilt-ridden Phaedra commits suicide.

Racine’s play is based on Euripides’s Hippolytus, but Jean Racine’s play is the work of a writer who views love as devouring passion.

Jean Racine’s Phèdre is a Gutenberg publication.

Gabriel Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine

As for Gabriel Fauré‘s Cantique de Jean Racine, it was composed when Fauré was 19.  The text itself is a paraphrase, by Racine of a Medieval hymn entitled Consors paterni luminis.  In Racine’s paraphrase (see below) God seems distant as He also seems in Phèdre.  This hymn is sung at the beginning of Matins, the Canonical Hour that ends as day breaks.  Set to Fauré’s music, the meaning of the text, an almost despairing hope that God “notre unique espérance” (our only hope) will have mercy on powerless humanity is expressed in a poignant yet resigned manner.  Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine is the centrepiece of this post. 

Alexandre Cabanel: a portrait of Phèdre

Our featured artist is Alexandre Cabanel (28 September 1823 – 23 January 1889), an academic painter.  He won the Prix de Rome and was awarded the Grande Médaille d’Honneur at the Salons of 1865, 1867, and 1878.  In 1863, Cabanel was elected a member of the Institute, founded on 25 October 1795, and appointed professor at the École des Beaux-Arts. 

Cabanel’s art has been described as art pompier (pompous), but his portrait of Phèdre is exquisite and renders her inability to fight a fatal love. She looks powerless.  Cabanel’s most famous work is The Birth of Venus, 1863, housed at the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris.

The Birth of Venus, by Alexandre Cabanel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

Le Cantique de Jean Racine: the Text

I have not provided an English translation of Racine’s Cantique.  However, translations of the canticle are available, in several languages, at ChoralWiki (simply click).

Verbe, égal au Très-Haut, notre unique espérance,
Jour éternel de la terre et des cieux ;
De la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence,
Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux !

Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante,
Que tout l’enfer fuie au son de ta voix ;
Dissipe le sommeil d’une âme languissante,
Qui la conduit à l’oubli de tes lois !

Ô Christ, sois favorable à ce peuple fidèle
Pour te bénir maintenant rassemblé.
Reçois les chants qu’il offre à ta gloire immortelle,
Et de tes dons qu’il retourne comblé !

 
 
composer: Gabriel Fauré (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924)
work: Cantique de Jean Racine, Op 11
performer: unidentified
 
imagesCA1Z0ES3© Micheline Walker
October 6th, 2012
WordPress

 

Valentine’s Day: Martyrs & Birds

14 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Literature, Love

≈ 77 Comments

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CUPID OR L'AMOUR MOUILLÉ, BY WILLIAM-ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU (1825-1905)

Cupid or l’Amour mouillé, William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

Valentine’s Day

Greek and Roman Antiquity
Lupercalia

Love has long been celebrated.  In ancient Greece, the marriage of Jupiter to Hera was commemorated between mid-January and mid-February.  As for the Romans, in mid-February, they held the festival of the Lupercalia.  According to Britannica, the Lupercalia was

[t]he festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery.[i]

At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I replaced the Lupercalia with a Christian feast, the “Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” to be celebrated on the 2nd of February.  It is said, however, that, in 496, the Pope issued a decree that made the 14th of February the feast of at least one saint named Valentine.  However, according to Britannica, “Valentine’s Day came to be celebrated as a day of romance from about the 14th century.”[ii]

Lupercalia was eventually replaced by Saint Valentine’s Day, celebrated on the 14th of February.  The 14th of February is no longer a feast day in the Catholic Church.  But it is a feast day in the Anglican Church.  Moreover, Ireland and France have relics of St Valentine, Valentine of Terni in Dublin and an anonymous St Valentine in France.

Saints and Martyrs

There is conflicting information concerning saints named Valentine.  It would be my opinion that the only St Valentine we can associate with Valentine’s Day is the saint who slipped his jailor’s daughter a note worded “From your Valentine.”

In French, Valentine’s Day is still called la Saint-Valentin, which suggests that there is a saint and martyr named Valentin.  In fact, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there may be three saints named Valentine:

  1. Valentine of Terni, the bishop of Interrama, now Terni, also a 3rd century martyr buried on the Via Flaminia,
  2. a Valentine who suffered in Africa with several companions and the
  3. Valentine who restored his jail keeper’s daughter’s sight and slipped her a note that read “From your Valentine,” the night before his martyrdom.
  4. If this Valentine is associated with Valentine’s Day, it is because of the note he slipped to his  daughter.  This saint would be Valentine of Rome, our St Valentine

Valentine’s Day Cards : Origin

Valentine of Rome, is mentioned, albeit inconspicuously, in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend.  Moreover, the Roman Martyrology, “the Catholic Church‘s official list of recognized saints,” gives only one Saint Valentine, the martyr who was executed and buried on the Via Flaminia and whose feast day is February 14th. (Saint Valentine, Wikipedia.)  This saint’s only link with St Valentine’s day is the note he slipped to his jailer’s daughter.  This note would be the origin of Valentine’s Day cards.

St Valentine was martyred about c. 270 CE, probably 269, by Roman emperor Claudius II Gothicus.[iii]  According to the emperor, married men were lesser soldiers.  This St Valentine could be Valentine of Rome.  But it could also be that this Valentine, Valentine of Rome, is the same person as Valentine of Terni, a priest and bishop also martyred in the 3rd century CE and buried on the Via Flaminia.  This view is not supported by the Encyclopædia Britannica.[iv]

However, as I mentioned above, if this saint is associated with Valentine’s Day, the note signed “From your Valentine” is the only link between a saint named Valentine and Valentine’s Day.  The note constitutes the required romantic element.

The Romantic Element

The Lady and the Unicorn
Chaucer: the day birds mate 

As mentioned above, Saint Valentine’s Day was not the feast of lovers (i.e. people in love) until a myth was born according to which birds mated on February the 14th.  This myth is probably quite ancient but it finds its relatively recent roots is Geoffrey Chaucer‘s (14th century) Parliament of Foules.  Othon III de Grandson (1340 and 1350 – 7 August 1397) [in French], a poet and captain at the court of England, spread the legend to the Latin world in the 14th century.  This legend is associated with the famous mille-fleurs (thousand flowers) tapestry called La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn), housed in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

N.B. The first version of the Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton’s 1478 edition.  Caxton translated and printed The Golden Legend in 1483.

Dissemination

Birds mating on 14th February
Othon III de Granson
Charles d’Orléans

It would appear that Othon III de Grandson, our poet and captain, wrote a third of his poetry in praise of that tradition.  He wrote:

  • La Complainte de Saint Valentin (I & II), or Valentine’s Lament,
  • La Complaincte amoureuse de Sainct Valentin Gransson (The Love Lament of St Valentine Gransson),
  • Le Souhait de Saint Valentin (St Valentine’s Wish),
  • and Le Songe Saint Valentin (St Valentine’s Dream). (See Othon III de Grandson [in French], Wikipedia)

Knowledge of these texts was disseminated in courtly circles, the French court in particular, at the beginning of the 15th century, by Charles d’Orléans.  At some point, Othon’s Laments were forgotten, but St Valentine’s Day was revived in the 19th century.

In short, St Valentine’s Day is about

  1. a martyr who, the night before his martyrdom, slipped a note to the lady he had befriended, his jailor’s blind daughter, signing it “From your Valentine.”
  2. It is about a legend, found in Chaucer‘s Parliament of Foules, according to which birds mate on the 14th of February.
  3. It is associated with an allegorical tapestry: La Dame à la licorne.
  4. It is about Othon III de Grandson (FR, Wikipedia), a poet and a captain who devoted thirty percent of his poetry to the traditions surrounding St Valentine’s Day.
  5. It is also about courtly love and, specifically, Le Roman de la Rose, part of which was translated into English by Geoffrey Chaucer.
  6. Finally, it is about Charles d’Orléans who circulated the lore about St Valentine in courtly circles in France.

There is considerable information in Wikipedia’s entry of St Valentine’s Day. It was or has become a trans-cultural tradition.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Folk Art Valentine, 1875

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[i] “Valentine’s Day.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/858512/Valentines-Day>.

[ii] “Saint Valentine.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/622028/Saint-Valentine>.

[iii] “Claudius II Gothicus.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/120521/Claudius-II-Gothicus>.

[iv] “Saint Valentine.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/622028/Saint-Valentine>.

 
Andreas Scholl sings Dowland‘s “Flow my Tears”
 
   
cupidangel
© Micheline Walker
14 February 2012
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