Olympias of Constantinople

25 July

Olympias of Constantinople, deacon, benefactor, cathedral staff member at Constantinople, and friend and disciple of the banished John Chrysostom, died on 25 July 410.

Born into a wealthy noble Constantinople family, about 361, Olympias was orphaned as a child and given over to the care of Emperor Theodosius by her uncle, the prefect Procopius. At about age twenty she married Nebridius, prefect of Constantinople, but he died soon after. She refused several offers of marriage, and Theodosius put her fortune in trust when she also refused his choice for a husband. When he restored her estate in 391, at age thirty, Patriarch Nectarius ordained her deaconess, and with several other women she founded a community. She was so lavish in her almsgiving that her good friend John Chrysostom remonstrated with her, and when he became Patriarch of Constantinople in 398 he took her under his direction. She established a hospital and an orphanage and gave shelter to the expelled monks of Nitria.

When John Chrysostom was expelled from Constantinople in 404, Olympias became his firm supporter. She was fined by the prefect, Optatus, for refusing to accept the usurper Arsacius as Patriarch, and Arsacius’ successor, Atticus, disbanded her community and ended her charitable works. She spent the last years of her life beset by illness and persecution but comforted by Chrysostom from his place of exile. She died in exile in Nicomedia on 25 July 410, less than a year after the death of Chrysostom. [Also observed 17 Dec.]