14th February is the feast of St. Valentine, who refused to renounce his Christianity and was executed outside the Flaminian Gate in Rome on this day in 269. Whoever he was, Valentine did really exist, because archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to St. Valentine. He is the patron of Epileptics & Bee Keepers. It is also the feast of St Cyril (d.869) and St Methodius (d.885), who carried the Gospel into the Slavic countries and invented the Cyrillic script to write a translation of liturgical books for Slavic peoples.
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