Olympias the Deaconess

Saint Olympias the Deaconess was a deaconess at Constantinople, a Roman noblewoman of Greek descent, friend and supporter of Saint John Chrysostom. She passed to the Lord on 25 July 408, in exile, at Nicomedia. The Church remembers her as one of the great almsgivers of the fourth century.

She was born between 361 and 368, at Constantinople or Antioch, the daughter of the noble senator Seleucus (in other sources, Anicius Secundus), from a wealthy family, and Alexandra. She took her name from an aunt on her father's side, who had once been engaged to the emperor Constans. Her paternal grandfather, Flavius Ablabius, had been consul. At eighteen she married Nebridius, a nobleman and prefect of Constantinople, and was widowed after two years. She refused many offers of marriage and gave her life to the Church, serving as deaconess in the time of Patriarch Nectarius, then of Saint John Chrysostom. Her life holds many good works: she built a hospital and an orphanage and cared for the monks driven out of Nitria. Chrysostom once told her that she had done almost too much. She founded a convent that grew to two hundred and fifty nuns, helped by fifty of her servants whom she had dedicated to it.

After Saint John's exile Olympias remained, with his blessing, in service at the church. A great fire then broke out at Constantinople, of which the enemies of John accused her. She was exiled, in 404, and, having lost her house, spent the rest of her days at Nicomedia, where she fell asleep on 25 July 408 (in some sources, 410), after a long illness. Her convent lasted into the seventh century, when its abbess, Sergia, reported that relics of Olympias had been found. Her statue is among the hundred and forty statues of saints on the colonnades of Saint Peter's Square in Rome. Her memory is kept on 25 July, and her troparion sings that she scattered her wealth and followed Christ. She is also commemorated on 7 August.