Saint Valentine is said to preside over romantic love. His feast day marks a night and day when couples around the world exchange flowers, chocolates, and ritualised displays of affection. Yet beneath these candlelit performances, falls a dark shadow. The two weeks immediately before and after Valentine’s Day see the sharpest shift in socialmedia relationship statuses from ‘dating’ to ‘single.’ This irony collapses when we return to the original hagiography of the ancient Roman martyr, which has nothing whatsoever to do with romance. Saint Valentine is, in fact, entirely loveless. This talk explores how an obscure patron saint of epilepsy, beekeeping, and the plague was posthumously transformed into the patron of love, even as his feast day is still to this day overtaken by pagan figures beyond the reach of Christendom.