Lupercalia festival

CEBU, Philippines - To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the cave on the Palentine Hill where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. Vestal virgins would bring sacred cakes made from the first ears of last year’s grain harvest to the fig tree. Two naked young men, assisted by the Vestals, sacrificed a dog and a goat at the site. The blood was smeared on the foreheads of the young men and then wiped away with wool dipped in milk.

The two young men then slice the goat’s skin into strips, dip them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping women and crops. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the skins because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. It is from these implements of purification, or februa, that the month of February got its name.

Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

As Christianity began to slowly and systematically dismantle the pagan pantheons, it frequently replaced the festivals of the pagan gods with more ecumenical celebrations. In the year 496 AD, Pope Gelasius did away with the festival of Lupercalia, citing that it was pagan and immoral. He chose Valentine as the patron saint of lovers, who would be honored at the new festival on the fourteenth of every February. The church decided to come up with its own lottery and so the feast of St. Valentine featured a lottery of saints. One would pull the name of a saint out of a box, and for the following year, study and attempt to emulate that saint. (www.meridiangraphics.net/lupercalia)