Venerable Platonida of Syria, Deaconess and Abbess of Nisibis

Saint Platonida of Nisibis

Today, alongside the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Methodius, we commemorate a Syrian anchoress who reposed in the early fourth century, Saint Platonida of Nisibis. A brief hagiography was transcribed by Saint Dmitri of Rostov in the seventeenth century, and this is still used in the OCA and the Russian prologues for the sixth of April.

Saint Platonida [also Platōnis, Gk. Πλατωνὶς] was a deaconess in Mesopotamia. The deaconess was a specifically-ordained office in the ancient church, specifically for women who would observe the order in the Church and assist bishops during the baptism of female catechumens. The deaconess was expected to be literate and to know the Liturgy. She would be tasked with instructing women and girls in the teachings of the Church, preparing them to answer the questions of the officiating priest at their baptism, and after baptism to continue instructing them in the ways of the Church. In the ancient church – and in some modern Orthodox churches as well – the nave was separated by sex, and the deaconess would preside over the female (north) half of the Church, greet female parishioners at the door, be present at women’s confessions, visit female parishioners when they were sick or dying, and so forth. In the ancient church, canon law prescribed that only women over forty – and then, women of celibate life, usually virgins or virtuous widows – would be considered for the office of deaconess*.

Saint Platonida served in this office for some years, and then desiring a life closer to Christ in holy solitude, withdrew into the deserts near Nisibis, modern-day Nusaybin on the Turkish-Syrian border. She established a community of holy virgins there, over which she presided as abbess. She led by holy example as much as by a monastic rule. However, the rule she set out for her sisters was particularly strict. Nuns would eat only once per day. The rest of their time they would spend in prayer or in studies of the writings of the Church Fathers, or in work: particularly needlework.

However, on Fridays, in remembrance of the suffering and death of Christ on the Cross, all the nuns’ work would stop and no classes would be held in the convent. The whole day would be devoted to prayer and to silent meditation on divine things. Sisters were expected to stay in the oratory the whole day on Friday, from morning to night, and while they were not praying they would listen to readings and commentaries on the Holy Scriptures.

Though her rule was strict and exacting, Saint Platonida was gentle with her sisters and did not ask them to do anything she was unwilling to do herself. She taught her nuns primarily by example, striving every day to please God with a blameless life of love and generosity. On the sixth of April in the year 308, Saint Platonida departed this life in peace in the company of her sisters, to join in the feast of the Heavenly Bridegroom. Holy deaconess and abbess Platonida, tutor of the Syrian nation, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Note: The question of ‘deaconesses’ in the Church is unfortunately a fraught one in the modern setting. Some of the confusions over this issue are deliberate and politically-motivated. Some Orthodox churches, like the Russian Church and the Church of Japan, still ordain deaconesses in their traditional apostolic rôle as leaders of classes in the catechumenate for girls and women who inquire about the Faith, and as officiants at the baptism and chrismation of female catechumens. Monasteries for nuns also employ deaconesses in an officiating capacity.

However, the office of deaconess has been unduly politicised by feminists, where its introduction is meant to serve as a rhetorical ‘wedge’ to speed the acceptance and ordination of female priests. Simply put: this is never how the office was understood in the ancient Church in which Saint Platonida served, and it is not how the office is understood now in the churches that have retained it. There are no Orthodox priestesses, استغفر الله, in Russia, in Japan or in Alexandria. Orthodox believers indeed should be aware of, and vigilant against, such bad-faith arguments holding forth the historical presence of deaconesses as an argument for ordination of women to the priesthood.

Unfortunately, there has been a politicisation as well in the opposite direction. This takes the form of reactionary, mostly-American clergy claiming that the office of deaconess never existed, or that it was not an ordained office, or that it did not belong to the apostolic age and is therefore less-valid. Against the first charge, the mere existence of saints like Phœbe and Platonida ought to be witness enough to its sheer falsity. Against the second, the confusion stems from a fundamentally-Western clericalist understanding of ‘ordination’ as a kind of liminal wall between those appointed to pastoral ministry and the common laity: in the Orthodox Church, even the laity are tonsured and ordained at baptism or chrismation! And yes, the office of deaconess was an ordained office. And against the third objection, it is merely necessary to note that the artificial separation of the ‘apostolic age’ from all subsequent mediæval developments – including deaconesses – is the delusional præoccupation of evangelical Protestants and takfiri-Salafi Islâmists, and is utterly alien to the historical witness of Orthodoxy.