Y'all may have celebrated him yesterday

but we've still got him here today

Or at least bits of him.

While St Valentine's skull is in a pretty glass casket in Rome (not my photo, btw) , the other bits are in a reliquary at the Church of Blessed Duns Scotus in the Gorbals district of Glasgow. The story has it that the entire reliquary was stored in a large cardboard box in the back of the vestments cupboard for rather a long time.

Not a very dignified sojourn for the long bones of somebody who just might possibly be one of the three contenders for the historical Saint Valentine.

St Valentine is not only the patron saint of husbands running around Marks & Spencers on their way home from each 14th of February....

The patronage of Saint Valentine also extends to epilepsy (from which he is believed to have suffered), bee-keepers, plague, greetings, travellers and young people. His representations include: birds, roses, a bishop with a crippled or epileptic child at his feet; a bishop with a rooster nearby; a bishop refusing to adore an idol; a bishop being beheaded; a priest bearing a sword; a priest holding a sun; and a priest bestowing sight upon a blind girl.

The Canadian connection (without which no blog post is worth putting on the internet) would be the town of St-Valentin, Quebec, population 478. The town's post-office has a heart-shaped postmark used to cancel stamps on letters sent from the town. Each February they receive letters from around the world to process and send out.