Image 1 of 1: Saint Olympias of Constantinople, devotional icon
Saints and feasts
St. Olympias
Widow
Olympias was a woman of rank who spent herself like a servant. Her life is not built on one dramatic scene, but on generosity, constancy, and endurance under ecclesiastical persecution.
The reading
ⓘ Butler source
Butler's Lives of the Saints, Volume IV (October-November-December), December 17, St Olympias, Widow, Christian Classics 1990, pp. 577-578.
Olympias was one of the great noble widows of the ancient Church at Constantinople. Rich, intelligent, and highly placed, she was married young to the prefect Nebridius, but after his early death resolved to remain single and to use her fortune for the poor and for the Church. Even imperial pressure could not persuade her into another marriage, and in time she offered herself for consecration as a deaconess under St. Nectarius.
Her house became a refuge, her wealth became alms and support, and her name became closely linked above all with St. John Chrysostom. When Chrysostom was persecuted and banished she shared the cost of loyalty to him, enduring accusation, fines, exile, sickness, and slander without losing the charity that had marked her from the start.
Historical note
This life uses St. Olympias because Butler gives her a fuller and more historically grounded life than the much more legendary post-gospel Lazarus material on the same date.
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