Happy Valentine's Day!: How Far We've Come Since the Days of Knights, Maidens, and "Courtly Love."

Happy Valentine's Day to all! Now go out and smooch everyone who looks like they may be a good suitor!
Alright, mayyyybe that wasn't such a good idea. A bit drastic (just maybe)? Alright, how about this: let's assume you have a lover or significant other, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, wife-o, huzzy, etc. Now, assuming you can, go to that person and either tell him/her a sweet little something (or a sweet nothing), maybe profess your love, or just give him/her a kiss and some chocolate. Whatever else you choose to do with your time is your own business, but at least the large majority of Western, American society accepts the romanticism of your illicit or explicit actions. We're not going to enjoy PDA, in large part, but, hey, it's Valentine's Day--to many of us, it's simply what coupled-up people do today. And, despite the relatively new phenomenon of open romanticism within Western culture, we take it for granted.
As with many popular holidays, Valentine's Day earns the phrase "things weren't always this way." Just as Christmas didn't start out with a fat man in a red suit, but rather a holy, slim one in a robe/loin cloth variation, (St.) Valentine's Day didn't start out all hugs, kisses, and tums with "hug me" on them. In fact, it started with a priest who was martyred in the third Century C.E./A.D. Legend tells that he was executed for marrying Roman soldiers; apparently, the emperor of the time thought his soldiers would be stronger unmarried. So yes, Valentine's execution was due to his faith in preserving love (the soldiers he was marrying to women on the front were not exactly of the high-and-mighty, chaste variety). However, as Rome became Catholic in the coming centuries and the influence of the church reached across the kingdoms of Europe, St. Valentine's Day was adopted under very different pretenses: to warn against the sexual, carnal, and thereby infernal motivation of pagan marriage and to promote the more civil, God-approved binding of the Christian marriage. This strict ideological and religious thought regimen was so ingrained in Catholic European society that, in the 12th Century, a book (a rulebook, in many ways) called "De Amore," written by Frenchman Andreas Capellanus (Andre de Chaplain"), was published and strictly adhered to. In English Society, this oeuvre became known as "The Art of Courtly Love."
In this Art of Courtly Love, he who is not jealous cannot love; when made public love rarely endures; every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved; when one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor; and a new love puts flight to an old one. I would argue that in contemporary society--with the exception of the widow rule, which I simply found entertainingly arbitrary and rigid--the notes Capellanus/Chaplain was actually making were statements concerning infatuation, whether he recognized it or not. People who enjoy long bouts of love with another individual do not always turn white upon seeing them; think of married couples who put up with each other's imperfections every day and yet still find a way to love them--there's no misguided, head-over-heels depigmentation going on every day in that relationship. Therefore, to me, it appears that the intense passion of infatuation (likely brought about by the fact that everyone had to appear almost rigidly asexual in proper, high society--until bedroom doors were closed) was what was being guarded against so steadfastly by the Catholic church. But, happily, things changed once the world became a bigger place...
I'm simply hypothesizing here, but I'm willing to bet that the expansion of Spanish conquistadors and French fur trappers in South and North America, respectively, after Columbus's discovery of the New World put love, and at the very least, passion, "in vogue." Yes, both societies were strongly and contentiously "more-Catholic-than-thou," and the pope and everyone back home in Europe would have hoped that Jean-Jacques and Cristobal remained chaste and moral-driven in that inhuman wilderness, but the sheer amount of disease spread through sexual and interpersonal contact in Latin America and the Caribbean show that this was not the reality in the early colonization period. Early on, the metis and mestizo populations of the French and Spanish interactions with natives served as our earliest evidence that not all was kept pure in the New World treasure chest. Andthen to make matters more sexual and love-oriented (I would argue), the Spanish and French kings both sent their variations of "the Daughters of the King" (Las Hijas del Rey/ Les Filles du Roi) to the colonies to literally propogate new Spains and Frances. Now, let's imagine a situation: Jean-Jaques has just met Josephine; she came in to port at Quebec a few days ago, and JJ has been eyeing her at the local "tavern" ever since. JJ's going off into the wilderness soon to catch some beaver pelts, and, without the influence of parents or an overly-apparent high society to dictate their actions, JJ and Josephine have a night on the town, and, shortly before he takes his three months in the woods, they are married by the local chaplain.
Whether or not the old Catholic guard of Europe would have approved of so casual and impulsive a marriage, they Kings sent women over with this intention in mind: to make children and spread France's/Spain's colonial influence. It is simply my argument that the new presence of independence and income (gained through men who could, for the first time, come from nothing and gain serious yearly winnings for their, say, beaver pelt sales) made a much more inviting, cultivating environment for love as we know it today. And, in a new world where you may freeze to death, contract malaria, or be killed by non-ally natives or hunger, and where you had a revolutionary sense of independence...why not fall in love? Why not rely on someone for support not only because they have money, but also due to that emotional warmth that comes from them may be the very heat that gets you through the winter every year?
I suppose, in the end, on this very Happy Valentine's Day for so many of us out there, I would just hope that people realize how far we've come, and contemplate how they can incorporate love into their lives no matter the rules or expectations of their society. After all, as I've tried to show here, people have been breaking the rules of Courtly Love for a milennium. Heck, if you don't like chocolate, give someone a heart-shaped Korean red bean pod package for Valentine's Day. Go ahead and take some of the rebellion pie for yourself. And if your chance at love this Valentine's Day was lost, remember that there's always next year (and that you might want to thank ol' JJ, Josephine, and Cristobal for that lurvely luxury).