Page:Goldenlegendlive00jaco.djvu/70

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S. DOROTHY

The glorious virgin and martyr S. Dorothy was born of the noble lineage of the senators of Rome; her father hight Theodore. In that time the persecution of the christen people was great about Rome, wherefore this holy virgin S. Dorothy, despising the worshipping of idols, counselled her father, her mother, and her two sisters, Christine and Celestine, to forsake their possessions; and so they did, and fled into the realm of Cappadocia, and came into the city of Cæsarea, wherein they set S. Dorothy to school, and soon after she was christened of the holy bishop S. Apollinarius, and he named her Dorothy; and she was fulfilled with the Holy Ghost, and in great beauty above all the maidens of that royame. And she despised all worldly vanities, and burned in the love of Almighty God, and loved poverty, and was full of meekness and chastity; whereof the fiend having envy at her blessed living provoked and set afire in her love the provost, so that he would have her to his wife, and anon sent for her in all haste, and when she came he desired to have her to his wife, and promised to her riches of worldly goods without number. And when this holy virgin understood his desire and request she refused it and denied it utterly, and all his riches setting at nought; and moreover she acknowledged herself to be christen,

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