Dorothy (Dorothea) (d. c.304), virgin martyr. The early martyrologies place her death at Caesarea in Cappadocia during the persecution of Diocletian. There are no historical details of her life; her surviving Acts are legendary but influential. They tell of a young lawyer called Theophilus who jeered at her on her way to execution for refusing to marry or to worship idols. He asked her to send him fruits from the garden (of paradise) where she was going. She agreed to do so and prayed just before her execution. An angel then appeared and gave Theophilus a basket containing three apples and three roses. He was converted and was martyred, also under Diocletian. Her popularity is Western rather than Eastern, centred in Italy and Germany. In England she seems to have been less prominent, but she does figure in stained glass and in screen-paintings especially of the 15th century. Her legend was known in Anglo-Saxon England to Aldhelm; in later centuries it inspired The Virgin Martyr, a tragedy by John Massinger and Thomas Dekker (1622), as well as poems by Swinburne and G. M. Hopkins. Dorothy's body is believed to rest at the church in Rome dedicated to her. Her usual attribute in art is a basket of heavenly fruit and flowers, appropriate to her patronage of brides, florists, and midwives. Feast: formerly 6 February.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Feb. I (1658), 772–6 and Propylaeum, p. 51; O.D.C.C., s.v.; see also C. Woodforde, Stained Glass in Somerset, 1250–1830, (1946); K. Wolf, ‘The Legend of St. Dorothy’, Anal. Boll., cxiv (1996), 41–72
