di Eleonora Ambrusiano
Valentia is a virtually unknown deity although her name has historically remained well present and widespread in the toponyms spread in Umbria in the Terni area in particular (Valenza, neighborhood and area in the city and, in the first outskirts, the hills of Valenza, and again Collevalenza village near Todi) and also in other areas of the Italian peninsula from the Roman colonization and not only: in fact we find Valenza in Piedmont, in Sardinia, (Vibo) Valentia in Calabria and again Valenza in the ancient Gallia Narbonensis (today Valence) and in Tarragonese Spain (today Valencia). The only archaeological attestation known at the moment is a dedication inscribed on a base dated to the 3rd century AD placed in a sanctuary of the ancient Ocriculum (Otricoli), a Roman city located near a large bend of the Tiber and equipped with an oil port, always near the city of Terni.

The dedication to Valentia, suggested by a vision of the goddess herself, represented the particular veneration of this divinity probably of indigenous origin. Also noteworthy is the discovery at Torre Maggiore in Terni, of a female head in marble belonging to a statue, and which we like to think was precisely the goddess Valentia in the place of the sanctuary dedicated to her in antiquity.
In the Historical-Mythological Dictionary of all peoples published in 1829 by Giovanni Pozzoli, Felice Romani and Antonio Seracchi, we read “Valentia: Goddess worshipped by the first inhabitants of Italy. Name that the Latin youth gave to the city built by the Aborigines on the Palatine Hill. Upon the arrival of Evander following that of Aeneas in Italy, the Greeks who accompanied them, left to the city all the meaning of the term, and called it Rome, which means the same thing as Valentia, Robur firmitos [firm strength]" it's still "Valentia Dea: Synonym of Roma Dea. Valentia was properly the goddess of health, synonymous with Valentina. Since the name Roma was substituted for that of Valentia, the latter was carefully forgotten, nor could it be pronounced without crime.".
The Goddess Valentia therefore seems to have been worshipped by the indigenous populations of central Italy also on the Palatine Hill, and it is even said that this was the ancient and secret name (or one of the names) of the city later replaced, for public diffusion, with that of Rome; and if the secret and unpronounceable name had been this, this could also explain and derive from the Roman salute: OK (Hello, health).
By consulting any Latin dictionary we can find the noun courage, derived from the verb valeo, with meaning of strength, vigour, but also capacity, faculty and good health; the areas of meaning relating to vigour, but also to power-capacity refer to and recall the attributes of Potnia Theron (Lady of the beasts) and to the goddesses “pharmaceuticals” (bearers of good health). Valentia can therefore be considered an ancient Goddess, Mother of the waters, of abundance, of fertility, of sacred sexuality, of the harvest and of healing: Multiform and All-powerful Goddess, guardian of the vital force and of birth, like the better known Bona Dea, of which we find a Lucus Good Goddess in the village of Acquaiura in Spoleto, Cupra, to which the most famous sanctuary of Plestia-Colfiorito (Foligno) is dedicated, and Feronia in Sabina, all of which are also in neighbouring geographical areas.
In the Italian language, the word valentia is attested and maintained, with Latin spelling, in the semantic field of strength, vigor, courage only, with the meaning also of ability and skill.
In Terni, particularly in the area of the city where the Basilica dedicated to the patron saint Valentine was built, there is the toponym Valenza (with a change in spelling but the same pronunciation), a southern district-zone of the city, not far from the center and which until a few decades ago was immersed and surrounded by the lush greenery of woods and vegetation. After the urban construction of the 50s and 60s, few traces remain and only the beautiful park that takes its name from the little church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is maintained, whose name is due to the memory of miraculous healings and an ancient sacred spring and wood. As has often been historically attested, the basilica dedicated to the holy Christian martyr bishop Valentine was also built on pre-existing buildings of certain "pagan" origin. In the underground part, in fact, there is an ancient hypogeum, used in Roman times as a mithraeum (i.e. a temple dedicated to the god Mithras), consisting of nine small chapels with barrel vaults with an adjoining altar and sources for ritual ablutions and open until the 80s-90s, with a small water source that was still active at the time: from that moment - with the excuse of securing the site and because of disputed jurisdiction between the Municipality, the Diocese and the Order of Discalced Carmelites - the accesses to the tunnels under the basilica were walled up. Fortunately, the photographic documentation is still available, edited by the group of speleologists (Gruppo Grotte Pipistrelli CAI Terni) and architects who were responsible for the explorations at the time.

Is it possible at this point to hypothesize that the toponyms are derived from the name of the Goddess Valentia, to whom the cities and places were dedicated, and from these the term "valentino" arose in the sense of inhabitant-citizen of the same, or in the sense of faithful-dedicated to the Goddess? And that subsequently the common name was transformed into the proper name Valentino-Valentina?

The tradition of the feast of St. Valentine as a bishop and then a Christian saint protector of lovers, as well as the patron saint of ancient Interamna Nahars (“the land of the Naharki born between the rivers”), now Terni, in fact has its origins only in the 492th century AD: between 496 and XNUMX the then Pope Gelasius I wanted to put an end to the Lupercals, the festive rites of Roman tradition that were still celebrated - even though Christianity had become the state religion and the ancient pagan cults had been officially abolished - on the inauspicious days (from the 13th to the 15th) of the month of February, the peak month of the winter period, in which the wolves exhausted by hunger approached the sheepfolds threatening the flocks, and a month of purification among other things, awaiting the spring rebirth. The Lupercalia were dedicated to the god Faunus in his aspect of Lupercus, that is, the one who keeps wolves away, protector of sheep and goats, but also of February, that is, the purifier of the sterility of the female womb. As Hubert Pestalozza reminds us, the scholars of the Roman era themselves shared the opinion that the ceremony of Lupercals had been brought by Evander from Greece to the Palatine, so the Latin god faunus it was the transposition of the Arcadian god Pan, already related to the great Anatolian female divinity, of which we have recalled above some characteristics also attributable to Valentia.
The other equally interesting hypothesis on the origin of these rites, reported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, concerns the miraculous breastfeeding of the twins Romulus and Remus by a she-wolf who had recently given birth.
In any case, the original seat of the cult of Faunus Lupercus it was a cave located on the Palatine and called precisely Lupercal, rich in springs and water sources and a thick oak forest (“robur"): Lupercus therefore as a companion and paredro of the Goddess. A goddess like Feronia – whose cult is well attested among all the Italic peoples – One and Multiform, “Goddess of agriculture and hell”, protector of handmaids and freedmen, of the so-called “sacred prostitution” and comparable to the Etruscan one Phersipnai and the Hellenic Persephone. Her places of worship are close to those of the ancient wolf-god (Apollo) Soranus – whose etymology remains in the toponyms for example of Mount Soratte, Soriano – and which are located near a sacred wood (the lucus, still present in the toponym Piediluco, always in the territory of Terni), a sacred mountain and/or an oracular site inside a cave/grotto with a water source, as in the hypogeum of San Valentino.
The ritual of the Lupercalia, as far as we can hypothesize or reconstruct from the sources, consisted of a “mysterious” part reserved for the sacred officiants, the priests – which took place in the cave and most likely involved the sacrifice of animals, sheep in particular, in place of humans, who were only anointed with sacrificial blood, and the animal skins were then cut into strips – followed by a “public” part, which culminated on the night between February 14 and 15 and experienced in the area near the hill and the cave by the faithful, who, running frantically, hit each other with whips made from the skins of previously sacrificed animals.
It is evident that these rites, whose propitiatory purpose remains clear, certainly had their origins in other even more ancient ones and in all probability linked to the end of winter and the rebirth of nature and therefore to fertility-sexuality and with the purpose of propitiating vigour and the incipient spring; in this sense therefore the possible link with the goddess Valentia in her above-mentioned attributes of strength, health, expansion etc. acquires even more strength. It should be noted among other things that the ritual actions of this period, linked to the cycle of death and rebirth of nature, could have somehow survived, adapted and transfigured in the celebration of Carnival which in fact manifests, from the north to the south of Italy, behaviours and rites of subversion of the established order (as Angelo Brelich recalls, the "substance of the celebration [is manifested] through ritual disorder and purification") and also presents many connections with the cult of the dead; considering also that in the same period, from 13 to 21 February, in Roman culture the Parentalia, in honor of deceased relatives. From the Edict of Milan in 311 AD, which granted freedom of worship to Christians, to the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, with which Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the step was relatively short and from about 382 AD the temples were closed or destroyed, the rites abolished until in 394 even the sacred fire guarded for hundreds of years by the Vestal Priestesses was extinguished, and yet the strength of the bond with the Goddess, although transformed and manipulated, was never completely lost. In fact, He has remained alive, even if weakened and hidden, in the small clues found in the names of places, in the sacred images of Madonnas and saints, in dances, songs and popular devotion, and which we become aware of if we allow ourselves to be guided, with an open heart, by His light of wisdom, faint but always alive and present in our hearts, and towards which we instinctively feel the call of life and of His Presence.
Eleonora Ambrusiano - January 13 2025
REFERENCES
- Lanfranco Aluigi – Valentia docet. The Goddess, the history, the territory – Morphema Editrice – 2013;
- Quintilio Palozzi – Epigraph CIL 4082, The Goddess Valentia. The Early Christian Site of Santa Maria di Otricoli –2023;
- Hubert Pestalozza – Mediterranean Religion. Old and New Studies – Bocca Brothers Publishers – Milan 1951;
- Angel Brelich – Introduction to the history of religions – University Editions – Rome 1966;
- Renato Del Ponte – Italic gods and myths – ECIG – Genoa 1985;
- Maria Concetta Nicolai – Femina in fabula. Goddesses, Priestesses, Sorceresses and sacred Prostitutes in Abruzzoor italic – Spoltore 2020;
- Pierluigi Bonifazi – Torre Maggiore. The sacred mountain of the Naharki –2023;
- Barbara Crescimanno – Nymphs and waters in Sicily. A sacred relationship - 2017.