Mamphusa

Holy Martyr Mamphusa was one of the five maidens, Aglais, Apollinaria, Daria, Mamphusa and Thaisia, who at Rome buried the bodies of the Christians killed under Trajan (98-117). They carried the martyrs' bodies in secret, anointed them with perfumes and wrapped them in shrouds. The princess Drosis, the emperor's daughter, an unbaptized Christian, asked them to take her with them. On the advice of her betrothed, the official Hadrian, guards were set beside the slain, and on the first night Drosis and the five maidens were seized. Trajan ordered his daughter held apart, and the others he condemned to burning in a copper-⁠smelting furnace. They accepted death bravely.

The tripods

From the copper mixed with the martyrs' ashes they made tripods for the emperor's new bath, but whoever crossed the bath's threshold fell dead. The priests understood the cause and advised removing them. Then Hadrian proposed melting them and casting five statues of naked maidens, to mock them, before the bath. Trajan agreed, but in a dream he saw five pure lambs grazing in paradise and a shepherd who told him that the Good Shepherd had taken them and that Drosis too would come there. In anger the emperor ordered two furnaces heated every day and had an edict posted calling Christians to sacrifice or throw themselves into the fire; many went willingly.

Drosis

Learning of it, Drosis resolved to accept death for Christ as well. In prison she prayed to be able to go out unnoticed, and the guards fell asleep. Thinking that she could not go to God without the wedding garment, she asked Baptism of the Lord, anointed herself with the holy myrrh she had taken and immersed herself three times in water. Seven days she hid, in fasting and prayer, and told the Christians who found her what had happened. On the eighth day she threw herself into the blazing furnace.

They are commemorated on 4 April, in the new style. The names of the five maidens are not in today's Menologion of the Russian Church.