Saint Platonis of Nisibis

Platonis (also rendered Platonida) was a Syrian ascetic of the early fourth century who served first as a deaconess and later founded and led a women's monastery in the desert near Nisibis. She is commemorated in the Eastern Orthodox calendar on April 6 and is venerated as a model of strict monastic discipline.

According to the synaxarion, Platonis began her service to the Church as a deaconess before withdrawing into the Nisibian desert. There she established a community of women under an austere rule, which she governed as its spiritual mother. The tradition remembers her chiefly for the rigor of the monastic life she instituted and for the personal example of asceticism, meekness, and charity she set for the sisters in her charge.

Platonis reposed in peace, by tradition in the year 308, after living to an advanced age. Sources offer little biographical detail beyond her role as deaconess and founder, and they place her in the region of Nisibis in Syria.