Stefan Branković the Blind

The Venerable Stefan Branković the Blind was Despot of Serbia from 1458 to 1459, the last ruler of the Branković dynasty. The Serbian Orthodox Church honours him as a saint, Saint Stefan the Blind. He is remembered as a ruler blinded by his enemies who bore his trials without abandoning the faith, and as the forefather of descendants honoured by the Church.

He was born around 1417, the son of Despot Đurađ Branković and Irene Kantakouzene. In 1439 Sultan Murad II took Smederevo and captured Stefan with his brother Grgur, and in 1441 he ordered them blinded. Because of this Stefan could not claim the throne when their father died in 1456, and his younger brother Lazar succeeded. When Lazar died in 1458 without a male heir, a regency of Stefan, the widow Helena Palaiologina and the governor Mihailo Anđelović took power. Anđelović, who enjoyed Turkish favour, tried to seize power, but the people of Smederevo prevented it, and Stefan became despot.

The kings of Hungary and Bosnia brought Stefan Tomašević, son of the Bosnian king, to the city, and he married Lazar's daughter Helena (afterwards called Maria) on 21 March 1459. Stefan the Blind was set aside and Tomašević took the throne. After losing the throne he lived for a time in Buda with his sister Catherine, widow of a Hungarian noble, then in Dubrovnik, from where he went to Albania, to his relatives. There in 1460 he married Angelina Arianiti, sister of the wife of Skanderbeg. With Skanderbeg's written recommendation he went to Italy in early 1461. He spent the rest of his life at the castle of Belgrado in Friuli, near Udine, in northern Italy.

He fell asleep on 9 October 1476. His holy bones were carried by his wife Angelina to Srem and in 1486 placed at Kupinovo, in a church built for the purpose. Angelina became a nun at the Krušedol monastery, which she founded in the Fruška Gora mountains, and is honoured as a saint herself; she rests there with their son John.

They had five children: George, who became a monk with the name Maxim and from 1508 to 1521 was Metropolitan of Ungro-⁠Wallachia; John; Irene, who died young; Maria, married to Boniface III of Montferrat; and Milica, married to the Prince of Wallachia Neagoe Basarab.