Drosis of Antioch

Drosis of Antioch is venerated as an early martyr of the Church, remembered by tradition as a daughter of the Roman emperor Trajan (98-117), under whose reign Christians in Antioch of Syria suffered persecution. She is commemorated on March 22, together with a company of five Christian virgins with whom her story is bound.

According to the synaxarion, five Christian women of Antioch had taken upon themselves the dangerous task of recovering the bodies of martyred Christians, anointing them with spices, wrapping them in shrouds, and burying them in secret. When Drosis learned of their work she left the imperial palace secretly to help them gather the bodies of the slain. The whole company was seized on the very first night of her participation.

When Trajan discovered that one of those arrested was his own daughter, he ordered her to be held apart from the others, hoping she might be persuaded to abandon her faith. The five virgins were sentenced to be cast into a furnace used for melting copper, and went to their deaths steadfastly. The tradition relates that Drosis, held in prison, prayed, baptized herself, and after a period of fasting and prayer went of her own will to the furnace and cast herself into the fire.