St Olympias, called by St Gregory Nazianzen “the glory of the widows in the Eastern church”, was to St John Chrysostom something of what St Paula was to St Jerome. Her family belonged to Constantinople, and was one of distinction and wealth. She was born about the year 361, and left an orphan under the care of the prefect Procopius, her uncle; it was her happiness to be entrusted by him to Theodosia, sister to St Amphilochius, a woman who, St Gregory told her, was a pattern of goodness in whose life she might see as in a glass all excellences.

   Olympias had inherited a large fortune and was attractive in person and character, so that her uncle had no difficulty in arranging a marriage that was acceptable to him and to her, namely with Nebridius, for some time prefect of Constantinople. St Gregory wrote apologizing because age and bad health kept him from attending the wedding, and enclosing a poem of good advice for the bride. The husband appears to have been an exacting man, but within a very short time Nebridius was dead, and the hand of Olympias was being sought by several of the most consider­able men of the court. The Emperor Theodosius was very pressing with her to accept Elpidius, a Spaniard and his near relation. She declared her resolution of remaining single the rest of her days: “ Had God wished me to remain a wife”, she said, “ He would not have taken Nebridius away.”

   Theodosius persisted, and as her refusal continued, he put her fortune in the hands of the urban prefect with orders to act as her guardian till she was thirty years old. The prefect even hindered her from seeing the bishop or going to church. She wrote to the emperor, somewhat acidly perhaps, that she was obliged to him for easing her of the burden of managing and disposing of her money, and that the favour would be complete if he would order it all to be divided between the poor and the Church. Theodosius, struck with her letter, made an inquiry into her manner of living, and restored to her the administration of her estate in 391.

St Olympias thereupon offered herself to St Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople, for consecration as a deaconess, and established herself in a large house with a number of maidens who wished to devote themselves to the service of God. Her dress was plain, her furniture simple, her prayers assiduous, and her charities without bounds, so that St John Chrysostom found it necessary to tell her some­times to moderate her alms, or rather to be more cautious in bestowing them, that she might be able to succour those whose distress deserved preference “ You must not encourage the laziness of those who live upon you without necessity. It is like throwing your money into the sea.”

   In 398 Chrysostom succeeded Nec­tarius in the see of Constantinople, and he took St Olympias and her disciples under his protection, and guided by him her benefactions were spread abroad; an orphanage and a hospital were attached to their house, and when the expelled monks came from Nitria to appeal against Theophilus of Alexandria they were fed andsheltered at the expense of Olympias, St Amphilochius, St Epiphanius, St Peter of Sebaste and St Gregory of Nyssa were among her friends, and Palladius of Helenopolis refers to her as “a wonderful woman...like a precious vase filled with the Holy Spirit” but it was with her own bishop that friendship was most mutually affectionate and trusting, and she was one of the last persons whom Chrysostom took leave of when he went into banishment in 404. It was necessary to tear her from his feet by violence.
After his departure, Olympias shared the persecution in which all his friends were involved. She was brought before Optatus, the prefect of the city, who was a heathen, on a charge of having set fire to the cathedral, but really that she might be persuaded to hold communion with Arsacius, the usurper of the bishopric. But Olympias was more than a match for Optatus, and was dismissed for that time. She was very ill all the winter, and in the spring was exiled, and wandered from place to place. About midsummer in 405 she was brought back to Constantinople and again presented before Optatus, who sentenced her to pay a heavy fine because she refused to communicate with Arsacius.
Atticus, successor of Arsacius, dispersed the community of widows and maidens which she directed, and put an end to all their charitable works. Frequent sicknesses, outrageous slanders and persecutions succeeded one another. St John Chrysostom comforted and encouraged her from his places of exile by letters, of which seventeen have come down to us and give an idea not only of his misfortunes but of hers as well. “As you are well acquainted with suffering you have reason to rejoice, inasmuch as by having lived constantly in tribulation you have walked in the road of crowns and laurels. All manner of corporal diseases have been yours, often more cruel and harder to be endured than many deaths; you have never been free from sickness.* You have been overwhelmed with slanders, insults, and injuries and never been free from some new tribulation; tears have always been familiar to you. Among all these, one single affliction is enough to fill your soul with spiritual riches.” In another letter he. writes: “I cannot cease to call you blessed. The patience and dignity with which you have borne your sorrows, the prudence and wisdom with which you have managed delicate affairs, and the charity which has made you throw a veil over the malice of your persecutors have won a glory and reward which hereafter will make all your sufferings seem light and passing in the presence of eternal joy.” We know also from these letters that St John entrusted Olympias with the execution of important commissions for him.
It is not known where St Olympias was when she heard of St John Chrysostom’s death in Pontus on September 14, 407; she herself died at Nicomedia on July 25 in the following year, not much more than forty years old. Her body was taken to Constantinople, where “she had become so celebrated for her great goodness that her very name was considered worthy of imitation, parents hoping that their children would be built on a like model.”

*    Elsewhere he writes to her: “Much patience is needed to see oneself unjustly deprived of wealth, driven from home and country to exile in an unhealthy climate, chained and imprisoned, loaded with insults, railing and contempt. Even the calmness of Jeremias could not resist such trials. Yet not even these or the loss of children dear as our very heart’s blood or death itself, the most terrible of evils in human estimation, are so trying to bear as bad health.”

Olympias born into a wealthy noble Constantinople family. She was orphaned when a child and was given over to the care of Theodosia by her uncle, the prefect Procopius. She married Nebridius, also a prefect, was widowed soon after, refused several offers of marriage, and had her fortune put in trust until she was thirty by Emperor Theodosius when she also refused his choice for a husband. When he restored her estate in 391, she was consecrated deaconess and with several other ladies founded a community. She was so lavish in her almsgiving that her good friend St. 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, gave shelter to the expelled monks of Nitria, and was a firm supporter of Chrysostom when he was expelled in 404 from Constantinople and refused to accept the usurper Arsacius as Patriarch. She was fined by the prefect, Optatus, for refusing to accept Arsacius, 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 July 25, less than a year after the death of Chrysostom.

   Count Godfrey of Brabant offered her the land and an endowment wherewith to build a monastery on it, which she gladly accepted. She put herself and her community under the direction of the abbot of Afflighem, a monastery near Alost (it is still in being) which at that time, according to the testimony of St Bernard, was peopled by angels rather than men.

Under such auspices the nunnery of Grand-Bigard prospered, though not without grave difficulties for the abbess; some of her subjects found her lacking in discretion, especially in the matter of austerities, and did not keep their opinions to themselves. St Wivina pointed out to them that they were being led away by Satan, but it required a miracle to persuade them that their abbess was in the right.
   After her death the abbey became a place of pilgrimage, and many miracles of healing took place at her tomb. The relics of St Wivina are now in Notre-Dame-du-Sablon at Brussels.