Drosis

Holy Martyr Drosis was, according to tradition, the daughter of the Emperor Trajan, who received death for Christ in the time of her father, a persecutor of Christians. The Church of Greece commemorates her on 28 July.

According to an account in the Russian synaxarion, Drosis was a secret Christian and unbaptized. Five Christian maidens, Aglaida, Apollinaria, Daria, Mamphusa and Taisia, were busy burying the bodies of slain Christians, which they took in secret, anointed with perfumes and buried. Drosis asked to be taken along with them. On the first night she and the five maidens were seized, after her betrothed, the official Hadrian, had set guards beside the martyrs' bodies. Trajan, recognizing his daughter among the prisoners, ordered her kept apart in the hope that she would change her mind, and condemned the five maidens to be burned in a bronze furnace.

Learning that Drosis would not recant, the emperor had two great furnaces heated. She prayed to leave the prison unseen, and God heard her prayer: the guards fell asleep. She baptized herself with the holy myrrh she had taken and spent seven days in fasting and prayer. On the eighth day the holy martyr threw herself into the glowing furnace. The Greek synaxarion says that she was thrown into a crucible for melting gold.