MANILA -- Do you ever wonder who St. Valentine is and why people around the world celebrate him on February 14?

Since the occasion is just around the corner, here are some bits of trivia about the martyr associated with the season of love.

According to an article released by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) on Tuesday, there are conflicting stories as to who the enigmatic character is.

Citing Fr. Brendan Lupton, an associate professor of Church History at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois, St. Valentine may or may not have been two different people.

“He was either a Roman priest and physician who was martyred or he was the Bishop of Terni, Italy, who was also martyred in Rome, around 270 A.D. by Claudius the Goth,” he said.

Nonetheless, Lupton said some of the current Valentine traditions in celebration of love are supposedly inspired by the martyr’s life.

“One (account) was that he had befriended the jailer’s daughter, where he was being imprisoned, and when he died, he left her a note inscribed with ‘From your Valentine,’” Lupton said.

“Another story is that Claudius the Goth actually had prohibited marriage amongst soldiers. He felt that if soldiers were married, they’d be less devoted to the army, especially at that time and they needed as many troops as possible. So there was a legend that Valentine actually had married soldiers in secret,” Lupton said.

Some accounts also say the exchanging of cards was inspired by the act of St. Valentine of sending out notes to his fellow Christians while he was detained.

Lupton said there was also a theory that the occasion replaced the earlier Roman holiday known as the Lupercalia.

The CBCP article describes Lupercalia as a tradition where “a group of pagan priests would sacrifice different types of animals and then run through the streets of Rome, slapping young women with the animal hides, a ritual that was thought to guarantee their health and fertility for the year.”

Nonetheless, Lupton said there are also many Valentine concepts or traditions that cannot be traced to St. Valentine like the image of cupid who is a baby angel with a bow and arrow, or the act of distributing chocolates.

Despite this, Lupton explained Christians could still emulate St. Valentine saying “you could say that in some ways, although few are called to martyrdom as Christians, in almost every act of love, there’s an element of self-sacrifice, self-renunciation.”