Dorothy was a Christian virgin of Caesarea in Cappadocia (modern Kayseri, Turkey) who, by tradition, was martyred during the persecution under the emperor Diocletian, variously placed at the close of the third century or the opening of the fourth. She is commemorated on February 6 together with the sisters Christina and Callista and the convert Theophilus, all of whom the tradition associates with her suffering. The synaxarion remembers her as a maiden of notable beauty, humility, and wisdom who confessed Christ steadfastly under interrogation.
According to the account preserved in the Orthodox tradition, Dorothy was arrested on the orders of the governor Sapricius and subjected to torture for refusing to renounce her faith. The governor sent to her two sisters, Christina and Callista, who had themselves been Christians but had apostatized out of fear of torment, hoping they would persuade Dorothy to abandon Christ. Instead Dorothy convinced them that God's mercy is offered to all who repent, and the two returned to the faith; for this they were put to death, in one account bound together and burned in a vat of tar.
The most widely transmitted episode of her passion concerns a man named Theophilus, described in the tradition as a lawyer or a counselor of the governor, who mocked Dorothy as she was led to execution and asked her to send him fruit and flowers from the garden of her heavenly Bridegroom. The tradition relates that a miraculous gift of roses and fruit was delivered to him out of season, in the cold of the Cappadocian winter; recognizing the sign, Theophilus confessed Christ and was himself tortured and put to death by the sword.
