According to legend, on this day in 269 Valentinus was executed in Rome for the crime of being a Christian. Fellow Christians buried him in a nondescript grave alongside the Via Flaminia, a busy artery connecting the imperial city to northern Italy. A few hundred years later, in the High Middle Ages, the gate where the Flaminian Way entered the city would be known as St. Valentine’s Gate.

The practice of executing someone for his religious beliefs – or lack thereof – scandalizes Americans. It was, however, a sad reality of Roman rule. Around the time of the death of Valentinus, the emperor Diocletian came to power, bringing with him the worst persecution of Christians in the brief history of the sect. But it didn’t last long. In 313 the enlightened Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, pronouncing the empire’s tolerance of Christianity, that heretofore troublesomely triumphalist sect.

Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has fouled up an attempt to issue his own edict of tolerance. In a lecture in Britain last week, he proposed that some aspects of Sharia – the strictest form of Islamic civil law – be adopted in his nation. This was apparently his idea of mollifying Great Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims, but while he has since “clarified” his remarks, the statement was an affront to Christians and Muslims around the world. The head of the Anglican Church in Nigeria said Williams’ words were “most disturbing and most unfortunate;” this from a clergyman who witnesses regular persecution of his flock by the majority Muslim population of that nation.

As the most senior clergyman in the international Anglican Communion, Williams has done his faith a great disservice. Like many Christians, he seems somehow to fail to comprehend that religious persecution, under Sharia and other caustic ideologies, is a reality in the world today. The Anglican Synod is meeting this week and will hopefully depose Williams, sending a message to the world that the 77 million members of the Anglican Communion will not even appear to tolerate religious persecution.

Thanks to Geoffrey Chaucer, Valentine’s Day – originally a liturgical feast in memory of the saint’s martyrdom – has come to be known as a celebration of love. In his Parliament of Foules birds begin their mating season in mid-February, on or near Valentine’s feast: “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.” If not for the biological clocks of the birds, St. Valentine would remain in obscurity, along with the vast majority of the Christian saints.

Perhaps it is time to look beyond Chaucer and recall the original purpose of the holiday: the remembrance of a martyr. The sorry story of Valentinus is being re-enacted daily around the world. In Pakistan, for instance, blasphemy against the Qu’ran or the Prophet Mohammed is punishable by death. In Afghanistan, apostasy – specifically conversion from Islam to another religion – is also a capital crime. So when Abdul Rahman became a Christian in 2006, the Afghani government threatened him with the death penalty. Under pressure from the United States and other nations, the charges were dropped and Rahman found asylum in Italy.

The twentieth century saw the worst systemized religious persecution in history. Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China legislated atheism and freely enforced it, leaving tens of millions of martyrs in their paths. Diocletian would be proud. So far, the twenty-first century is not as bloody, but dictators like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Kim Jong Il of North Korea seem unlikely to willingly end their reigns of religious – and anti-religious – terror.

The free world should send a message to those who persist in the barbarous practice of religious persecution, and it shouldn’t be accompanied by roses or chocolate: your Valentines won’t have to wait for their vindication by the tides of history. We see them now, and you can’t hide anymore.