While the details of who St Valentine was are debate,one thing is agreed upon: he was martyred and buried on February 14 at the Roman mortuary on the Via Flaminia, the ancient road from Rome to Rimini.
However the details we have of St Valentine could be of one saint or two converged saints with the same name,this means there are many different biographies in circulation.
The most popular legend is that St Valentine - a priest from Rome - was arrested after secretly marrying Christian couples, who were being harassed by Emperor Claudius II in the third century AD.
As helping Christians was considered a crime, St Valentine was imprisoned; while in jail he try to convert the emperor to Christianity and was condemned to death. He was beaten with stones and clubs, before being beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate.
According to some, while in prison St Valentine fell in love with the jailer’s daughter and sent her a love letter signed ‘from your Valentine’ on February 14, the day of his execution, as a goodbye.
Wearing a coronet made from flowers and with a stencilled inscription, St Valentine's skull now resides in the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, on Rome’s Piazza Bocca della Verità.
A casket containing a number of St Valentine's bones and a vial of his blood have been stored in the Whitefriar Street Church, in Dublin, since 1936, and couples regularly visit the religious shrine to ask him to watch over their lives.
Many couples preparing to marry also head to this church on February 14, the feast day of the saint, for a Blessing of the Rings in the presence of the reliquary.