00:00Stop scrolling. The most romantic day of the year started as the most disturbing festival in history.
00:07Every February, ancient Romans celebrated Lupercalia. It was a wild fertility festival.
00:13Priests would sacrifice goats and dogs, cut their skins into whips, and run through the streets whipping people.
00:19And the craziest part? Women would actually line up to be whipped because they believed it would make them fertile
00:26and make childbirth easier.
00:28It was so pagan and so chaotic that Pope Gelasius I finally banned it in the late 5th century.
00:35He replaced it with a Christian holiday honoring St. Valentine, a priest executed by Rome for his faith.
00:41But here's the real plot twist. For almost a thousand years after that, Valentine's Day still had nothing to do
00:48with love.
00:49It wasn't until the 1300s that the poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem linking Valentine's Day to romance
00:56and invented the holiday we know today. So roses and chocolates? It all started with goatskin whips, an execution, and
01:04a poem.
01:04It all started with goatskin whips, an cowpick, and a few other goats egids.
