Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/134

122 122 ST, OMERANDA Pantadia. Her hospitable doors were always open to the bishops and other religions men and women who came from all parts of the empire to Constantinople. She was seyeral years under the pre- scribed age, when Nectarins consecrated her a deaconess of the church of Con- stantinople. He did not allow her to dcTote all her energies to this office, for he consulted her on numerous ecclesias- tical matters, in which she was better yersed than he was, as he had been appointed to the primacy while yet but a catechumen. St. Chrysostom succeeded Nectarius in 897. He immediately saw the value of such a woman as Olympias, and of her influence over a large circle of the best and most distinguished ladies of Constantinople. He consulted her on many subjects, and allowed her to provide for his bodily needs. She could minister to his necessities, while sympathizing with his determination to avoid all self- indulgence and all splendour, and she was his active agent in many works of charity and piety in various parts of the world. By his advice, she became less indiscriminate in her gifts, as he repre- sented to her that she was bound to use her great resources prudently, so as to do the greatest possible amount of good to proper oljects, instead of giving to covetous persons who did not really stand in need of relief. With his ap- proval, she gave hospitality to the Nitrian monks, when they were expelled from their desert cells, by the persecuting Theophilus. When Cbrysostom's stormy primacy and long struggle with the Empress Eudoxia ended in his banish- ment in 404, Olympias with a number of the women, who had been his faithful friends and admirers, assembled in the baptistery of the great church o( St. Sophia to receive his parting blessing. That very night, the church, the senate house, and the palace were burnt down. Olympias and her friends were accused of having set them on fire. Optatus, the prefect, questioned Olympias very rudely. She completely disconcerted him by her fearless and witty answers. So he tried to compromise the matter by ofifer- ing to drop the accusation, on condition of her receiving Communion from Ar- sacius, the new patriarch. She indig- nantly declined to have the matter dropped. She was publicly accused of a crime which was quite foreign to her character and manner of life; she de- manded that the insulting charge should be withdrawn before any terms of com- promise could be considered ; and as for communicating with Arsacius, she re- garded him as unlawfully intruded into the place of St. Chrysostom, her true bishop. After the excitement and fatigue of this episode, Olympias had a serious illness. As soon as she was able, she left Constantinople and went to Sysicus (Artaki), whether of her own will or under compulsion is not certaia After a time Optatus again sent for her and im- posed on her a heavy fine for declining to enter into communion with Arsacius ; the women who had formed a happy circle around her were dispersed; her health was shattered ; she was sent some- times to one place, sometimes to another, and she experienced the ingratitude and the rudeness of many on whom she had bestowed kindness, including some of her servants, who disliked her ascetic way of living and joined her persecutors. Notwithstanding all this spoliation and her profuse liberality, she still had pro- perty from which she sent money to Chrysostom in his exile. The seventeen letters from him to Olympias which are preserved, show that their friendship was lifelong, but it is to be regretted that their dates cannot be positively fixed. For her consolation, he wrote a treatise on the theme that "No one is really injured except by himself.*' The time and place of Olympia's death cannot be ascertained. She was alive in 408 and was certainly dead before 420. Besides the eminent saints already mentioned, she counted among her friends, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Peter of Sebaste, St. Epiphanins of Cyprus, and other great and good men. Tillemont. Butler. Smith and Wace. Palladius. Lebeau. St. Omeranda gives name to a church in Ageuois. Chastelain. St. Oncan, Oct. 20. Kirk Oncan, or Kirk Conchan, in the Isle of Man, is supposed to take its name from Concsbsa,