Holy Women Olympias the Deaconess of Constantinople and Eupraxia, the Virgin of Tabenna

Olympias (c. 368–c. 408) was a rich heiress of Constantinople who lost her betrothed or husband after less than two years and refused the second marriage that the emperor Theodosius proposed. She became a deaconess, gave her fortune to the poor and the Church, and supported John Chrysostom. After his exile in 404 she was fined over a fire at the cathedral and exiled to Nicomedia, where she died.

Eupraxia (c. 380–413) was the daughter of a Constantinopolitan senator, Antigonus, who died young. Her widowed mother took her to Egypt and settled by the convent at Tabennisi in the Thebaid, where the five-year-old girl asked to stay. She grew up there in strict fasting and manual work, refused the marriage the emperor had arranged, and died at about thirty.