The life of St Drosida of Antioch
His sermon, though, tells almost nothing beyond her name, her death, and her burial in the city's cemetery. A far fuller and more elaborate account did not appear until many centuries later, in the service books of Constantinople, which cast her instead as a daughter of the emperor Trajan who, though secretly a believer and still unbaptized, joined five Christian virgins in the dangerous work of gathering and burying the bodies of martyrs left exposed by the emperor's order. Caught and separated from her companions, who were put to death, Drosis is said to have baptized herself in hiding before at last giving herself to the same fire that had claimed them.
Scholars who have studied the record judge the fuller story a later, legendary elaboration built up around the bare, older memory that Chrysostom preached on; the Church nonetheless keeps her memory, together with her five companions, each spring.
