Friendship cannot be hindered by the length of journeys, nor by the heavens, nor by the earth, nor by death, nor by anything else; rather, it is stronger and more powerful than all these.
Saint John Chrysostom, Homily IX on the Epistle to the Ephesians
With a friend, even the path of exile is easy; without one, you do not feel at home even in your own house. With a friend, even poverty is bearable; without one, even health and wealth are unbearable. A friend is another self. I am sorry that I cannot put into words the true nature of friendship. I realise that my words fall far short of what ought to be said.
Saint John Chrysostom, Homily II on 1 Thessalonians
In the nave of Hagia Sophia, on the left-hand side, beneath the two rows of windows in the northern tympanum, there is a niche containing a two-metre mosaic depicting Saint John Chrysostom, in his episcopal vestments and holding the Gospel in his hand, blessing, from up there, every visitor who has set foot in this church over the last thousand years. Placed here, probably during the reign of Basil I the Macedonian (experts estimate that the mosaic was created around that time), Saint John Chrysostom is not alone, but in the most distinguished of company, alongside two other great hierarchs of the Church: Saint Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Saint Ignatius Theophorus, the Holy Martyr, each bestowing his blessing from his own niche.
Originally, these ‘three, gathered in My name’, as the Saviour says 1, were a veritable host, an entire synod of hierarchs: fourteen mosaics of the Holy Fathers, seven on one side and seven on the other. We know this for certain, because it was not the Ottomans who destroyed them, as we might be tempted to believe. They survived hidden beneath a thick layer of plaster until 1847, when Sultan Abdülmecid I commissioned the Swiss architects Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati to restore Hagia Sophia. Abdülmecid was one of the most visionary and prolific sultans in terms of architecture; among his foremost achievements are Dolmabahçe Palace and the Ortaköy Mosque, two of Istanbul’s most important tourist attractions, the design of both revealing a profound European influence, the likes of which had never before been seen in the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan gave the Fossati brothers free rein to document and record the Byzantine art that had been concealed for centuries by his ancestors. Paradoxically, it was precisely this welcome openness of the sultan towards Christianity that would prove a greater misfortune for Hagia Sophia than the iconoclastic zeal of all the sultans who had preceded him: the restoration, which would bring to light the mosaics of the Holy Fathers, would also be the very process that destroyed eleven of them. The oil used by the restorers to treat the walls proved to have the exact opposite effect to that intended: it seeped into the underlying layer, causing the mosaics to flake off and fall en masse during the earthquake that struck two years later. It is estimated that 70–80 per cent of the mosaics still in existence at that time in the great church were lost in this way.
Under such circumstances, it seems astonishing that the icon of Saint John Chrysostom has survived so well, being, in effect, the best-preserved of the three mosaics still found today on the northern tympanum. And since nothing in this world happens by chance, but everything is subject to God’s perfect order, this endurance—through the centuries and against all human logic—conveys a message that could not be clearer: Saint John Chrysostom remains, quite literally, embedded in stone; he is flesh of the flesh of the church from which, sixteen centuries ago, he was cast out.
It was the year 404 AD, on the great day of Easter, ‘this chosen and holy day, the feast of feasts and the celebration of celebrations’, when an envoy of Emperor Arcadius, the official Marin, accompanied by a heavily armed troop, burst through the doors of Hagia Sophia and dragged Archbishop John out of the church. We can imagine the nightmare depicted in just a few simple words in the saint’s hagiography: the clergy’s bewilderment, the fear and outrage of the faithful, the women’s screams, the jostling of the crowd, with the archbishop in the midst of it all, allowing himself to be thus mocked – an atmosphere more akin to a crucifixion than to a resurrection.
To top it all, the church from which he is forcibly dragged (although he is not guilty of any of the charges brought against him) is none other than the greatest sanctuary of Christendom. Here, according to all heavenly and earthly laws, any criminal may find refuge by clinging to the holy altar. No human power has the right to storm in to punish anyone. It was the culmination of a conflict that had been raging for years, almost from the moment Saint John had been enthroned as Archbishop of Constantinople. From the outset, his election had deeply displeased Pope Theophilus of Alexandria, who had hoped to appoint to this position a priest under his own jurisdiction, named Isidore, not because he was more virtuous or more learned than Saint John, but so that he might pull the strings and, de facto, lead the Patriarchate of Constantinople through him.
The saint is therefore seized and confined to his nearby cell, where, throughout the entire period of the Pentecostarion, he will await the emperor’s decree, whilst being subjected to repeated assassination attempts, of the most fanciful kind (one of the assassins would even pretend to be possessed by a demon, so that no one would suspect him of such a calculated act; but, having been caught before he could carry out his plan, he will be saved once again through the intercession of the saint who, upon hearing what is happening, will send one of the bishops who remained loyal to him to rescue the assassin from the hands of his tormentors). It had come to the absurd situation where ordinary people, citizens of the city who loved their bishop, had begun to do the soldiers’ work, standing guard in shifts around the hierarch’s residence. At last, the order came. The saint was to be sent into exile, far away. It was the second sentence of this kind. The first had ended badly for the imperial family, with a devastating earthquake that shook, in particular, the apartments of Empress Eudoxia, his declared enemy. At that time, she herself had been convinced that the great Chrysostom must be brought back to Byzantium as a matter of urgency, lest the whole city should collapse. In the meantime, it seems she had forgotten the terror she had experienced not long before. With the mercy and care that had always made him so beloved by the people, the saint did not wait for the rumour of his expulsion to spread through the streets of the city (for that would have led to bloodshed), but instead left the patriarchal palace through a side door and went to Hagia Sophia, as Bishop Palladius was to write 2, to bid farewell to the Angel of the Church. Then, for the very last time, he blessed his disciples and, surrendering himself to the soldiers, set out on the great and final journey of his life.
The journey was to be utterly dreadful, in the saint’s own words: ‘the journey terrifies me more than a thousand exiles’3. And not only because the arduous journey itself would worsen his already precarious state of health, but, above all, because the accompanying soldiers had received special orders from the empress to do everything in their power to ensure that the hierarch died on the way. His hagiography tells us that they covered a three-day’s journey in a single day, that they did not even give him a saddle on which to ride, they took his spending money, mocked him and, at times, even spent the night in brothels simply to upset him. The mission was to be successfully accomplished. The ‘Golden-Tongued’ of the Church would pass away forever on 14 September 407, in Pontus, near the small town of Comana.
And yet, something good came out of all this. Just as only God knows how to turn evil into good, to make a greater good out of evil, so too has this terrible exile brought us a collection of correspondence of breathtaking beauty, the likes of which the world has perhaps never seen before—not merely letters, but a veritable travel journal and, at the same time, an indispensable spiritual guide for all people in times of trouble.
We might be tempted to believe that his sufferings were supreme (and indeed they were), that none of his disciples could have suffered as he did. Here we would be sorely mistaken, for, as he himself said: ‘A friend is another self’. And perhaps Saint John Chrysostom was less unhappy than one might think from reading his life, insofar as he is one of the few people who truly had such an ‘other self’, who suffered just as much, with and for him. We would have been deprived of this friendship, or, at the very least, we would not have been able to grasp its full beauty, had exile and persecution not given rise to the letters that have survived for more than a millennium and a half and which allow us to penetrate the intimacy of a soul of rare delicacy, perhaps more closely and more personally than we have ever had the opportunity to draw near to any other saint. The letters which Saint John Chrysostom sent from exile to his disciple, Saint Olympias the Deaconess, provide a thoroughly satisfying answer to the age-old question: can a man and a woman have a pure, genuine friendship, free from any passion, a friendship in the true sense of the word? The answer is yes. They can, when both are saints.
…perhaps Saint John Chrysostom was less unhappy than one might think from reading his life, insofar as he is one of the few people who truly had this ‘other self’, who suffered just as much, with and for him.
…can a man and a woman have a pure, genuine friendship, devoid of any passion, a friendship in the true sense of the word? The answer is yes. They can when both are saints.
Who, then, is this woman to whom the great John Chrysostom, the hierarch who was seen standing beside the throne of the Holy Trinity, often addressed himself with the words: ‘my lady, beloved of God’? If we consider her origins and social standing, we find that Olympias was, by birth, far above Saint John.
She belonged to the original aristocracy of Constantinople; her grandfather, Avlavius, was part of the first generation of nobles appointed by Saint Constantine the Great to lead his new administration, holding offices such as that of consul and prefect of the praetorium for the East. The hagiography of the saint even mentions that he was the famous Avlavie who appears in the hagiography of Saint Nicholas the Bishop of Myra in Lycia, as the eparch who was tricked into condemning the three innocent princes, who were subsequently saved by the miracle that took place. It is also stated here that ‘he was second only to the emperor in the days of the Great Constantine’”” His daughter, Olympias’s mother or aunt (opinions differ on this point), was betrothed to Constans I, the youngest son of Saint Constantine the Great, but, as he was killed in the Pyrenees in south-eastern Gaul, the marriage did not take place. Instead, she went on to marry King Arshak II of Armenia. From this point onwards, the sources begin to contradict one another: either this daughter of Avlavius (also named Olympias) was poisoned by a rival, or she was not Olympias’s aunt but her mother, who, having been widowed, remarries a Byzantine nobleman, a palace count—who is, incidentally, a pagan—with whom she bears the saint. Other sources also suggest a third possibility, namely that the saint is the daughter of Avlavius’s son, the pagan Seleucus.
Whatever the truth may be, what remains worth noting is that Saint Deaconess stood at the very pinnacle of society, possessing a colossal fortune and being one of the most sought-after young women of her time.
On the other hand, Saint John Chrysostom was not the first in a line of great saints whom this young woman of noble birth was to count among her friends and teachers. At her wedding to the nobleman Nebridius in the year 384, Saint Gregory the Theologian was among the guests; but, as he was suffering terribly from gout, he sent her a poem, written especially for her, containing teachings on family life, in which he addresses her, calling her ‘my child’. Added to this was her friendship with Saint Gregory of Nyssa. Not only did he dedicate his masterful commentary on the Song of Songs to her, but he states, in the preface, that he wrote the commentary because Olympias had asked him to: ‘I have become aware of the zeal you have—commensurate with your pious life and your pure soul—for the Song of Songs, a zeal which you have shown us both in person and in writing, so that, through a commentary that does justice to its pure meanings, the wisdom hidden within these meanings and within its words—purified of their immediate literal meaning—might be revealed. For this reason, I have wholeheartedly taken on board your wish in this regard, not because any benefit for your moral life would result from this (for I am convinced that the eye of your soul is purified by these divine words), but rather to offer those who are most carnal some guidance towards the spiritual and immaterial state of the soul, to which this book leads through the wisdom hidden within it”.
In other words, Saint Olympias is the moral author of one of the most important biblical commentaries in the entire history. This exalted spiritual state is in addition to her endowment with great intelligence, learning and beauty.
Saint Olympias is the spiritual author of one of the most important biblical commentaries in all of history. This exalted spiritual state is complemented by her endowment with great intelligence, learning and beauty.
Her fiancé, the young Nebridius, died sometime in the year 386. That the eye of her soul was truly pure is shown by what followed.
Not only had the saint never been married, in the physical sense of the word, but she also refused to consent to a second marriage. Theodosius the Great (the emperor at the time), who proposed that she marry Elpidius (a relative of his from Spain), was met with fierce resistance from the young woman, who wished to devote her life exclusively to God. The emperor attempted a stratagem that should have borne fruit, given the exorbitant luxury in which she had been raised: taking advantage of her still tender age, he placed her entire fortune under the guardianship of the eparch who, instigated by the Spaniard Elpidius, forbade her from meeting with her spiritual mentors, and even from attending church. To everyone’s surprise, the saint adapted immediately to her new way of life, even thanking Theodosius himself for having freed her from vain glory and the burden of her wealth. After four years spent in asceticism and seclusion—four years during which nothing could shake her resolve—the emperor restored her wealth and her freedom.
Immediately upon regaining them, Olympias began to spend at a dizzying pace. Not for herself, however, but for the poor, for churches, for widows and orphans, for anyone who wished to benefit from her extraordinary generosity. Saint John Chrysostom was not yet around when the saint was ordained a deaconess by Patriarch Nectarius of Constantinople. Regarding their relationship, Palladius himself says: ‘I know that His Holiness held her in high regard and followed her advice in matters of the Church’. Making use of her inestimable wealth, Olympias founded the first women’s monastery in Constantinople, situated somewhere between the Basilica of Saint Irene and Hagia Sophia, right next to the patriarchal palace. In this convent, the order of services was modelled on that of the akoimetoi (the sleepless monks), with prayers being offered ceaselessly, in shifts, 24 hours a day. It is clear that there was a keen desire amongst the city’s female population for such a way of life, given that no fewer than 250 women, from various walks of life, accepted the invitation.
In the year 398, Saint John was elected to the patriarchal office. The friendship that would develop between him and Saint Olympias would become legendary, but it would also fuel numerous intrigues in the power struggles that would characterise the saint’s entire ministry. Namely: the great Chrysostom would temper the saint’s downright wasteful enthusiasm, teaching her to choose on whom and for what to spend her wealth, so that only those who were truly in need might benefit from her charity, and channelling her immense generosity, which until then had been lavished on a large number of profiteers: ‘to increase the wealth of the rich,’ he says, ‘is like throwing your possessions into the sea’4 The first to take this suspension of funds as a personal attack will, of course, be Theophilus of Alexandria himself—yet another reason to regard John as a personal enemy.
The woman who stood by the great hierarch ‘like a Thecla beside another Paul’5 will thus also be swept up in the infernal maelstrom of intrigues and slanders that will tear her chosen friend from the episcopal throne. It was not difficult to find not just one pretext, but several, to remove Saint John: accusations—completely unfounded—ranging from heresy to the crime of lèse-majesté and the betrayal of his own namesake and deacon who, after beating his slave like a pagan—thereby incurring the saint’s anathema—would claim that he had been unjustly punished. They went so far that, at the second sentence of exile, they applied certain ecclesiastical canons invented by the Arians specifically to remove Saint Athanasius the Great from his see, decades earlier. At the same time, the very same bishops who judged him were also his accusers and witnesses, turning his trial into a despicable farce.
In one of the countless episodes of conflict between Saint John Chrysostom and Empress Aelia Eudoxia, God withered the hand of a soldier who dared to strike the doors of Hagia Sophia with his sword (the soldier was later healed by John), on the day of the hierarch’s final expulsion, He showed everyone that He loved His saint—this living temple of the Spirit, not built by human hands—more than the very adornment of His house itself, for Hagia Sophia, by a divine miracle, caught fire of its own accord, with the flames bursting forth from the altar and spreading throughout the cathedral, before emerging into the city in the form of a flame as long as a serpent, and burning the Senate Palace to the ground, along with other buildings on the outskirts of the city. However, it did not touch the houses in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, precisely to make it clear that the fire had not been started by human hands, nor, incidentally, by accident; indeed, there were no casualties. And, since everyone was saying that the fire was God’s punishment for the saint’s expulsion, scapegoats naturally had to be found, for which Saint Olympias was the most obvious choice. The saint’s disciples were accused of setting fire to the church, in a trial presided over by the (pagan) Optatus, and Olympiada responded to this accusation with a remark of the most basic common sense: that she was not in the habit of setting fire to churches, given that she had spent her entire fortune on building them. As he could not extract anything from her and could not, in any case, produce any evidence, Optatus was forced to release her along with the other nuns, on condition that she recognise the new archbishop, Arsacius. Some agreed to this, but the saint remained steadfast, going on to face several trials, as a result of which she was forced to pay a huge fine; having withdrawn of her own accord to Cyzicus, she was later transferred to Nicomedia. Before her departure, however, she advised the nuns who remained to accept Arsacius, so as not to cause a schism in the Church.
Perhaps she continued to hope, right up to the very last moment, that she would see the Holy Hierarch at least once more; his letters suggest that he, too, harboured such a hope. But ‘a man may, thanks to his friends, be in several places at once, at the same time’, says Chrysostom in Homily LXXVIII on John. Throughout this period, the two would be united in spirit, carrying on their famous correspondence. From this correspondence we learn details that no historian could otherwise have conveyed: the attacks by the Isaurians in exile, the terror, the hatred of certain monks to whom the saint had done no harm, the increasingly unbearable physical suffering, the episode in which the patriarch, overcome by fever, fled in the dead of night from those who sought to kill him, after having had an accident with his litter in which he nearly lost his life. Comparing his letters with the hagiography, however, we see that he tells us very little of the almost daily taunts to which he was subjected, emphasising instead the kindness of the devout people who helped him on his arduous journey. At times he even admits that he has omitted certain more unpleasant details, precisely so as not to sadden her.
His letters are particularly formal, revealing a respect far greater than that which a spiritual father is entitled to show his disciple; it is clear from them that he regarded Olympias not as a disciple, but as an equal. It is astonishing what praise the very same man who criticised Eudoxia so harshly can bestow upon a woman. Whilst he had compared the empress to Elizabeth and Herodias, to the holy deaconess he writes: ‘The fear of judgement [the Last Judgement] cannot touch you, just as it does not touch the angels’6).
Writing, like any good Byzantine philologist, in full accordance with the rhetoric of the time, there is, nevertheless, something incredibly human behind his stylistic flourishes. A touching picture emerges through the veil of words. Two friends: the first consumed by dark thoughts and the second (himself battered beyond measure), struggling to make it seem as though things are not quite so bad, the optimist in the equation, whose sole joy is to cheer the other up. A scene with which many of us will be familiar from our own lives. The purpose of his letters is not, in fact, to give an account of his unhappy wanderings, but rather a way of pulling her out of the depression into which events and his absence have plunged her, she being, in her heart (at least this is what emerges from the letters), far more broken than he was. Their correspondence is a kind of spiritual psychological therapy, however, not only for the saint, but for all readers. A thousand years before all the psychologists who today labour to identify the causes of depression, Saint John Chrysostom defines it, briefly and comprehensively, as the work of the devil, a final temptation which the consummate Olympias had to overcome. We also learn from the letters that the saint practised extremely austere asceticism, sleeping rarely and eating only enough to survive. He reminds her of these self-imposed privations to show her that, in comparison, the hardships inflicted by people should seem light to her. And, above all, he attributes dispassion to Olympias, presenting us with a dilemma of colossal importance, namely: how can those who are dispassionate, those who are no longer in any way enslaved by earthly desires or passions, nevertheless be as sensitive as possible, especially when it comes to the sufferings of their friends. The great hierarch thus presents us with a reality that few of the attackers of the faith can understand: the fact that so-called ‘mortification’ for God does not entail transforming a person into a sort of emotionless statue, a living dead person, but, on the contrary, it actually emphasises precisely those sensitivities that spring from love and care for our fellow human beings. On another occasion, the saint does not reproach him (that would be going too far), but points out that he replies to his letters too rarely, and he himself provides the explanation: because of his sorrow. We understand here that Olimpiada had, for a time, been in a state of genuine depression, one of those in which she no longer had the strength even to write. When she regained her footing, however, she became tireless.
Having endured so much persecution herself, the pious woman remains the right-hand woman of the holy patriarch, a means by which he can still exercise some control over the ecclesiastical matters he cannot abandon, especially as his disgrace affects not only him, but sets off a whole cascade of events, in which many of the finest priests and bishops are also banished and replaced by unworthy clergy. His exile became a tragedy for the entire Church, not only from an administrative point of view, but also from a purely spiritual perspective. The Church found itself in one of the most acute crises in its history. At the heart of all these dramas was Olympias who, whilst she still lived in Constantinople, became the former archbishop’s intermediary with the powerful figures of the day, doing her utmost to ease his exile, to have him moved to better places, and, naturally, finding herself once again on the brink of death whenever she failed. We can even discern, from all this, a certain cyclical pattern in her periods of depression versus feverish activity. As for her physical condition, the letters of Saint John Chrysostom could serve as a medical journal. We learn that, even from her youth, the saint had been in very poor health, that ‘illness of the body, of many kinds and in every form, [...] has not ceased to besiege you unceasingly’, as the hierarch wrote to her in a letter. At times, they seem to be bound by an inexplicable connection, as if to illustrate his words ‘a friend is another self’, both finding themselves on the brink of death at the same time. Just like the deaconess, the patriarch’s body was worn down by asceticism and fasting; he was unable to sleep, suffered from the cold no matter how much he heated his home, and endured terrible stomach pains. In the winter of 405–406, they found themselves in such a dreadful situation that they could scarcely even write to one another. The saint felt compelled to beg her not to send him any more letters, unless someone happened to be passing through the area on other business, for the roads were overrun with robbers and the last messenger, who had carried their correspondence, had barely escaped, ‘stripped of everything he owned’7
However, alongside the autobiographical details and words of encouragement, these letters are also something else, something perhaps unique in the whole of Byzantine literature: a eulogy to longing, or, rather, the theology of longing. Saint John Chrysostom does not condemn this feeling as an impulse of hearts that are not exclusively concerned with God, but attributes it to the Great Apostle Paul himself, when he interprets a passage from the First Epistle to the Thessalonians as follows: ‘But what do you want and what do you desire, tell me [Paul], what do you desire with such fervour? “I long to see their faces, for we have striven all the more to see your faces” [1 Thessalonians 2:17].” – What do you say, O exalted and great one? You who regard the world as crucified and are yourself crucified for the world [Galatians 6:14], who, having been freed from all things carnal, have become almost incorporeal, have become so enslaved to love that you have descended into this body of earthen clay, which is subject to the senses? – ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and I am not ashamed to say so, but I boast of these things; for I seek them, having within me the wellspring of all that is good: love.’ And he does not simply seek their physical presence, but desires above all to see their faces, for he says: ‘for we have longed all the more to see your faces’ [1 Thessalonians 2:17]. – Tell me, then, do you wish to see their likeness and to see their faces? – “Yes, and very much so,” he says, “for this is where their senses are centred. For an empty soul, united with another soul, will not be able, of its own accord, either to speak or to hear anything; but if I enjoy a bodily presence, I shall be able to speak and hear something from those I love. That is why I wish to see your face, where there is also the tongue that gives voice and reveals what lies within us, and the ear that receives words, and the eyes that depict the movements of the soul, for through these I may more fully enjoy the fellowship with the soul I long for’8
And perhaps we shall read this passage from the letter of Saint John Chrysostom quite differently when we remember that his disciple, Saint Proclus, who saw the Apostle to the Gentiles whispering in the great patriarch’s ear how to interpret his epistles.
Unfortunately, in the history of Byzantine literature, this highly theological correspondence was to become one-sided, for the pious woman’s letters have been lost. From him, we have words of gold; from her, only silence—that silence of the sea which wipes away our footprints from the sand, that silence of time itself. Yet, even in death, the hierarch and the deaconess remain as one. Their bodies travelled in a marvellous manner across the sea until they found their resting place: the relics of Saint John will pass unhindered through a terrible storm in the Dardanelles, to land at the Church of Saint Thomas the Apostle, whilst Saint Olympias appeared in a dream to the Metropolitan of Nicomedia, commanding him to place her body in a boat and to bury her wherever the boat came to harbour. And the boat would come to rest at Briktoi, near Constantinople, again at the Church of the Apostle Thomas, an angel instructing the churchwarden to place the saint within the sanctuary. In the end, each will return to their rightful place: the hierarch’s body will be laid, with great honour, upon his patriarchal throne, whilst that of the pious woman will once again be cast into the waves following a devastating fire, only to be recovered and brought to the monastery she founded. Upon the arrival of their relics, indescribable miracles will take place: the sick, the lame and the possessed will be healed and, perhaps even more astonishing, Chrysostom will speak through his body, which has been dead for 31 years, and so much blood will flow from Olympias’s relics that the hands of the clergy, the cloths, and even the very sea from which the saint was drawn will turn red. Death had left them both so full of life!
Then time passes, as it is wont to do. Theodosius the Younger, Saints Marcian and Pulcheria, the great lion and the little lion, Zeno, Anastasius and Justin, three dynasties falling one upon the other, like autumn leaves. At the zenith, dazzling, the age of Justinian. And, just as light comes from a flame, Constantinople would be refined by fire like gold and silver, as if eagerly awaiting the Nika revolt to come to fruition. There is a flower in southern Africa, a scarlet flower of rare beauty, Cyrtanthus ventricosus, or, more simply, the fire lily. The flower is a bulb that never blooms, no matter how much you water it or how much fertiliser you apply, but only and exclusively nine days after a fire has scorched the earth above it. This is sixth-century Constantinople. Amidst the flames of the revolt that nearly forced one of the world’s greatest emperors to abdicate, Hagia Sophia—the sanctuary where Saint John had once served—burned, and with it, wall by wall, the monastery of Saint Olympias also burned. And Justinian rose from the ashes; not just himself, but an entire world. The consecration of the new Hagia Sophia took place on Christmas Eve in the year 537, and the new monastery of Saint Olympias was consecrated the following day, on the very feast of the Nativity of the Lord. This was God’s way of purifying the places from which His saints had been driven out, or perhaps the two great fires, following which both Hagia Sophia and the saint’s monastery were rebuilt a thousand times more resplendent; are a symbol of the complete burning through which the two offered themselves as a pure sacrifice, for the fire of the persecutions they endured, only to be reborn in the Kingdom of Heaven, more beautiful than before.
And once again, time, in an avalanche. Earthquakes, sieges, civil wars, dynasties rising and falling with the tide, Latins and Turks. If all the blood that has been shed over the centuries within Hagia Sophia were gathered together, it would be enough to turn the Bosphorus red. Here, treading carefully over the blood that cries out to God from beneath the heavy marble slabs, his soles stained red and leaning against one of the columns, stands the Angel of the Church to this day. You cannot see him, but it is as though you can hear, in the air, a faint rustling of wings.
Above, from the northern tympanum, the Patriarch of Constantinople has been blessing you ever since the 9th century. When, on that Easter day, the soldiers arrived with the emperor’s order that the saint should leave Hagia Sophia, Chrysostom replied: ‘I received this church from Christ, my Saviour, so I cannot leave it’9 And, indeed, he has not left it for over a thousand years. In defiance of time itself, Christ has not yet told him to leave.
- 1
Matthew 18:20.
- 2
Palladius of Helenopolis (364–430), a friend of St John Chrysostom, wrote a work about him entitled Dialogue on the Life of St John Chrysostom.
- 3
The Sixth Epistle to St Deacon Olympias.
- ”””
Lives
- 4
Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, trans. by His Eminence Iosif Gheorghian, Bucharest, 1897, reprinted 2020.
- 5
Nichifor Calist, Ecclesiastica historia, XIII, 24.
- 6
The Eighth Epistle to Saint Olympias the Deaconess.
- 7
Letter XV to Saint Olympias the Deaconess.
- 8
Letter VIII to Saint Olympias the Deaconess.
- 9
Lives of the Saints for the Month of November, Thirteenth Day, published by Sihăstria Monastery, Vânători-Neamț, 2006.