She was a martyr in Caesarea (Cappadocia, central Turkey) during the great persecution of the Emperor Diocletian (313). Solid historical fact is lacking, but that is compensated for by the beautiful if legendary "Acts of St. Dorothy". According to this account, as she was taken to her death for refusing to worship idols, a lawyer named Theophilus made fun of her and asked her to send him fruit from the 'garden of Paradise' where she maintained she was going. In response to her prayer, an angel duly appeared and presented to Theophilus a basket containing three roses and three apples. This apparition was enough to cause his instant conversion, and, in turn, his own martyrdom for the faith. The cult of St. Dorothy was popular in Western Europe especially in the late Middle Ages and her representation can be seen in surviving pre-Reformation art in East Anglia, for example. The shrine of St. Dorothy is in Rome, in the church dedicated to her in Trastevere (i.e. the 'other side' of the Tiber). She is the patron saint of florists and greengrocers, and her feast day is the occasion for a blessing of a whole cornucopia of flowers, vegetables and fruits, many of an exotic tropical kind such as she would never have known in her lifetime in the arid steppes of Turkey.