St. Dorothy

Who they were

Dorothy of Caesarea is venerated from the early centuries, and the story everyone knows about her is a legend, which is worth saying before telling it, because the legend is the devotion and it survives being labelled.

Led to execution in the dead of winter, she was mocked by a young lawyer named Theophilus, who called after her to send him apples and roses from the garden of the bridegroom she claimed to be going to meet. After her death, the story runs, a child appeared to Theophilus carrying a basket: three roses and three apples, fragrant, out of season and out of the world. Theophilus believed, confessed, and followed her. Medieval Europe adored the tale, and the florists' guilds took the saint of the impossible basket for their own permanently. The honest frame does the legend no harm at all. Whether the basket is history, the hope it carries is doctrine: the world to come is real, and its fruit is already being sent on ahead.

Why people turn to St. Dorothy

Florists and gardeners, including the funeral florists whose winter roses carry her exact message several times a week. Gardeners, with St. Fiacre. And the grieving, for whom the basket is the gentlest picture of the world to come anyone has managed.

How to ask their intercession

With flowers in your hands, which is the prayer said at the counter and at the graveside arrangement alike.