I looked into the life of Saint Valentine, having decided to give you an overview of the history of the Saint rather than advise caution about one particular activity or another on this black Thursday. I was not surprised in the least to see the feast day attributed to seven or more men named "Valentine" through the ages, one as recently as 1936. I was surprised to find out that the martyr for whom the feast day began was on the whole obscure. The Romans had recorded the day of his martyrdom, but the year was up in the air between 269, 270, and 273 according to different historians. Later church officials claimed to know of his greatness, but attributed his works as unknowable.
Basically, the man didn't exist.

To make matters worse, the association of the feast day with romantic love is speculated to be the outright invention of Chaucer in one of his works some millenium or so later. Basically he made the whole thing up.
And if it was good enough for Chaucer, by gum it should be good enough for me. So instead of discussing the history of someone who for all I know could have acted a total sprode and been canonized for it, I'm going to discuss an excellent Saint, prince-among-men and vampire hunter who is my own patron, Saint Casimir.

In fact Saint Kazimieras' feast day isn't until March 4, but we'll be getting to that soon enough. In life, Kaz was a young prince who was called away from his Polish palace home to rule the land of Hungary by the Christians there who would rather have a holy Christian King than rulership under the Turks. Of course, that's what the history books have recorded, but I have a better history to tell.
Two of Kaz' tutors when he was nine years old and onward were notable figures in their own right. One, Jan Duglosz was a Polish soldier and chronicler. The other, called Callimachus, was also known by the name Filippo Buonaccorsi in Italy, and in other parts known as Philip Belmont, instructor and father of Trevor Belmont of vampire hunting fame. Kaz was a student of the whip and of the Hunter clan years before Trevor Belmont would attack Vlad at Wallachia. Circumstances arose in Hungary when Kaz was a boy of thirteen, however, and he was sent off to depose the wicked vampire king Matthias Corvinus and bring the light of Christ back to a then unholy land. Buonaccorsi's complaints were not heeded, and he wasn't allowed to accompany Kaz himself, and so the campaign was doomed to failure. Kaz escaped with his life; exploiting what training he had had as a Hunter to survive the tide of evil minions. Thanks to Buonaccorsi's influence and clever courtsmanship, he had Kaz' would-be assassins deposed, and Kaz assumed the throne of Poland as a Prince, and assisted his father and brother with the public affairs of Poland and Lithuania.
The Hunters would later destroy Corvinus and dispose of Vlad Tepes shortly before Kaz died in 1484, presumably of tuberculosis or other severe lung problems. His campaign against the forces of darkness, and survival through legions of their minion ranks was attributed as one of his miracles that led the Vatican to canonize him.

In honor of Saint Kazimieras, who is Saint Casimir to you and me, I'll be playing Castlevania later, probably Dracula's Curse. Curiously enough, I'll also be in some small keeping with the conventional holiday, as I'll be collecting plenty of small hearts to power my subweapon.
Furthermore, I'll be celebrating the practice of human spiritual romantic love come March 4th, Saint Casimir's day. Really I'm up in the air about the memorial itself or the Sunday closest to the memorial, the coming March 2, which is Kaziuko Muge, the traditional Lithuanian celebration. I don't think they celebrate the vampire part of things, so I'll leave the tradition to the traditional and instead make things up on March 4th.
Things as normal until then. Enjoy.

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