Photo by Pezibear cc

'Aurora now had left her saffron bed,

And beams of early light the heav'ns o'erspread,

When, from a tow'r, the queen, with wakeful eyes,

Saw day point upward from the rosy skies.'

                                                                                                          Virgil : The Aeneid

There is a shrine containing relics of St Valentine at the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Dublin, Ireland. The flower you see in the hand of the saint there is not the red rose, but a golden crocus.

The saffron crocus is a healing plant, a spiritual symbol shared in many faiths and cultures from Hinduism to Bhuddism to Islam. Valentine carefully wrapped it in his last letter as a gift to his pupil, a girl he'd been treating for blindness and who he was now training. The note said, 'From your Valentine.' 

It is difficult to imagine more love wrapped up in this than the practical and poetic soul of Valentine captured.

The girl was healed and her sight restored, though Valentine was martyred in the morning. So the first ever Valentine card was a message of love, but not of romantic love. It was everything, from the healing to the handing on of the task of healing and of teaching, perhaps preaching, perhaps more, under threat of death for the sake of love. Saffron: colour of courage and sacrifice.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38618139

                                        Photo by Hubertl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 

There is more to this little flower, and this story, than meets the eye. 

St Valentine married couples secretly under the ban of Emperor Claudius. Of course this makes him the patron saint of lovers. Is there unease that the saint associated with romantic or sexual love, or with the sacramental nature of erotic love, is the same person as the saintly healer? Or that he handed on his work to a woman?

I don't think one story detracts from the other.

There are so many loves. So many kinds of lovers.

I find it really important that Valentine represents more. We see his compassion as a healer, his generosity as a teacher, and his personal sacrifice in martyrdom for the young ones that he married. And his humility in ensuring that the work went on without him, without prejudice.

Valentine is barefoot and dressed in red as a martyr.

The price of love is high.

But the crocus is bright and the gift brings sight: 'the saffron light of dawn'.

***********

There is so much more to say about use and symbolism of Saffron more widely. I cannot  fit it all in here. Sorry.

CS Lewis in 'The Four Loves' counts affection, friendship, sexual love, and charity, this last meaning 'unconditional God-love, agape'. For me it matters that Valentine combines these loves in his story. How do I write about these things on Wattpad? How do I represent them? How do I categorise them and present them?  

I applaud TashInTheClouds for her recent work 'Wattsex,' a critique of the presentation of sex and sexualisation within the guidelines here on Wattpad. It is shocking in parts, because such is the nature of the material she has found. I am grateful to her for addressing this very important issue.