Saint Olympias of Constantinople

Saint Olympias was a wealthy noblewoman of Constantinople. Widowed young, she gave her fortune to the poor and to the Church, served as a deaconess and remained faithful to Saint John Chrysostom even in his exile. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on July 25, the day of her death.

She came from a distinguished family; her father Seleucus held the rank of count. The year of her birth is not known; it falls in the 360s. She lost her parents early and inherited a great fortune. In the mid-380s she married Nebridius, prefect of Constantinople, but after less than two years she was left a childless widow.

Emperor Theodosius I wanted to marry her to his kinsman, the Spaniard Elpidius. Olympias refused, saying that if God had wanted her to live in marriage, he would not have taken her husband. The emperor then placed her property under the administration of the city prefect until she turned thirty, and the prefect even kept her from meeting bishops and going to church. Olympias thanked the ruler for lifting a burden from her and asked him to distribute her goods to the poor and the Churches. In 391, after the war against Maximus, Theodosius restored her right to her property.

Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople, made her a deaconess. Beside the principal church of the capital she founded a community, joined by her relatives and many young women who wished to serve God. She supported the poor, Churches in distant provinces and bishops, among them Amphilochius of Iconium and Epiphanius of Cyprus. Palladius of Helenopolis describes how she took in the Egyptian monks driven out by Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria.

When Saint John Chrysostom was made bishop of Constantinople, he became her spiritual guide. He advised her to give away her wealth prudently, according to real needs, while she saw to his daily sustenance. In 404 John was removed from the city again, and right afterward the cathedral burned. Olympias was accused of setting the fire. Before the prefect she replied that her life spoke for her, for she had given her fortune to restore churches. She refused communion with Arsacius, installed as bishop in John’s place, and was sentenced to a heavy fine. She left Constantinople; Sozomen writes that she went to Cyzicus. It is not certain whether she was banished or left of her own accord.

From his exile in Cucusus in Armenia, John wrote letters to her; seventeen of them survive. He strengthened her in her dejection, called patience in suffering the queen of virtues and consoled her when she failed to obtain his transfer. Benedict XVI quoted one of them in 2007.

Olympias died in Nicomedia in Bithynia. The year of her death is uncertain; it is most often given as 408, a year after John’s death. Palladius recorded that the people of Constantinople counted her among the confessors, because she went to the Lord in the midst of her struggles for God’s honor. She has been venerated as a saint since antiquity, in the East and in the West.