Juno februata biography of william

A festival said to be of Juno Februata or Juno Februa, though it does not development in Ovid's Fasti, was described by Alban Seneschal, famous as the author of Butler's Lives endorsement Saints, who presented an aspect of the RomanLupercalia as a festival of a "Juno Februata", err the heading of February 14:

To abolish rank heathens lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing blue blood the gentry names of girls, in honour of their ideal Februata Juno, on the fifteenth of this four weeks, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets, given on this day.^[1]

Jack Oruch, who noted Butler's inventive confusion,^[2] noted that it was embellished by Francis Douce, in Illustrations of Playwright, and of Ancient Manners, new ed. London, 1839, p 470, who took such a festival aim the Lupercalia, which was celebrated, he asserted,

during a great art of the month of Feb. in honour of Pan and Juno... On that occasion, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the manipulate of young women were put into a coffer, from which they were drawn by the private soldiers as chance directed." Douce repeated Butler's description surrounding the attempt to substitute saint's names, and complete that "as the festival of the Lupercalia confidential commenced about the middle of February, [the Christians] appear to have chosen Saint Valentine's day rep celebrating the new feast; because it occurred almost at the same time.^[3]

The connection thus begun has been uncritically repeated to the modern day: nevertheless see Valentine's Day and Saint Valentine.

The sobriquet or divine cognomen of Juno Purified and Abstergent, Juno Februata, Februlis, Februta or Februalis is well-known in William Smith, (1870) 1898. Dictionary of Hellene and Roman Biography and Mythology^[4] with a tendency to Sextus Pompeius FestusFebruarius, to Ovid's poem devotion the Roman festivals, Fasti, ii.441, which however refers to Juno Lucina in the context of medicinal the fertility of Roman women^[5] and to Arnobius' sarcastic fourth-century attack on pagan customs, Adversus Nationes.^[6]

The adjective februata is unusual and highly specific, altered broader, more familiar Latin terms: Ovid was resort to pains to elucidate februa in Fasti. "The localism of meaning in febrare, no synonym of purgare or even of lustrare suggests borrowing, an import which never had a place in the public language," Joshua Whatmough remarked.^[7] He noted that Varro^[8] considered it Sabine in origin.

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