Family and marriage
She was a daughter of the Serbian despot Jovan Branković and of Jelena Jakšić, and so was connected by blood to the Branković and Lazarević noble houses; her uncle, Metropolitan Maxim (Branković), is himself numbered among the saints. Some accounts place her birth around 1485, but 1487 is the year generally given.
Her marriage to Neagoe Basarab took place in 1505. Romanian accounts relate that the match was mediated by Saint Nifon (Nifon II), Metropolitan of Wallachia, who served the couple as spiritual father. Neagoe came to the throne in 1512 and reigned until his death in 1521.
The couple had six children: Teodosie, who briefly succeeded his father as voivode; Stana, who married Stephen IV of Moldavia; Petru; Ioan; Ruxandra, who married first Radu of Afumați and then Radu Paisie; and Angelina. Three of the six — by one Romanian account two sons and a daughter — died young. A devotional tradition preserved at Doxologia relates that she lost all of her children one by one before losing her husband as well.
Church building and patronage of culture
With her husband she raised the monastery church of Curtea de Argeș, consecrated on 15 August 1517, the work with which the couple's memory is most closely bound. Her benefactions reached beyond Wallachia: she assisted materially the monastery of Krušedol in her native Serbia.
In 1520 she began the building of the hermitage of Ostrov (Schitul Ostrov), which was completed in 1522. Romanian sources remember her as a woman of learning and piety and as a protector of the arts and of culture in Wallachia.
Widowhood, regency, and exile
Neagoe Basarab died in 1521, and their son Teodosie succeeded him as a minor; Despina acted as regent on his behalf in 1521–1522. The reign did not last, and with her daughters Stana and Ruxandra she withdrew to Transylvania, settling at Sibiu under the protection of the Hungarian crown.
Accounts of her monastic profession differ in detail. She took the name Platonida on entering the monastic state in 1545; one Romanian account associates her withdrawal into prayer and stillness with the hermitage of Ostrov, while the record of her last years and repose places her at Sibiu.
Repose
She died at Sibiu on 30 January 1554; a Romanian account reports that the cause was plague. Her body was brought back to Wallachia and buried at the cathedral of Curtea de Argeș, the church she and her husband had built.
Relics & Shrines
Her burial place is the monastery church of Curtea de Argeș, the foundation she raised with Neagoe Basarab and the site from which her monastic name is now styled — Platonida of Argeș.
Glorification
On 1 July 2025 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church, meeting at the Patriarchal Palace in Bucharest under Patriarch Daniel, approved the canonization of sixteen women of holy life. Among them was "Nun Platonida (1487–1554), wife of Prince Neagoe Basarab," entered in the calendar as Saint Platonida of Argeș, formerly Despina Milica, with her feast on 26 September. Others glorified in the same act include Princess Maria Brâncoveanu, Schemanun Filofteia Antonescu, the nun-martyr Evloghia Țârlea, Schemanun Elisabeta Lazăr, and Măndălina Cătălinici.
The canonization was proclaimed at the Patriarchal Cathedral in Bucharest on 6 February 2026. Her feast on 26 September is the day on which her husband, Saint Neagoe Basarab, is also commemorated.
A note on the name
Her monastic name has led to confusion with an earlier saint. She is distinct from Saint Platonis of Nisibis, the fourth-century Syrian ascetic also called Platonida, with whom she shares nothing but a name.
