JUSTINA, ROMAN EMPRESS. — Daughter of Justus, consular of Picenum and a relative of Magnentius, whom she married while still a young girl. After becoming a widow around 370, she married Valentinian I, by whom she had four children. At the death of her husband (November 373), she had her own son Valentinian II acclaimed as emperor, together with Gratian, and remained with him at Sirmium until Gratian’s death (August 383). When she came to Italy, she openly revealed herself as an intriguing woman, directing the politics of her son.
A declared supporter of Arianism, she waged a struggle against St Ambrose, insisting that the bishop surrender a basilica to the heretics. Ambrose refused, and Justina attempted to have him arrested and exiled, but the people rose up in defense of their bishop. The Empress, enraged, responded with harsh repression (385). Increasingly hardened in her tyrannical arrogance, in January 386 she extended an edict directed against St Ambrose and the Catholics, imposing the decisions of the Arian Council of Rimini and threatening the death penalty against those who disturbed religious peace. The following year, however, circumstances changed radically: the usurper Maximus threatened to occupy Italy, posing as a defender of orthodoxy; Justina, fearing for herself, begged St Ambrose himself to go as an ambassador to Maximus. The holy bishop, forgetting every wrong done to him, undertook the arduous task. The mission was unsuccessful, and in 387 Maximus occupied Italy. Justina, together with her son Valentinian, fled to Thessalonica, seeking asylum with Theodosius. She appears to have died in 388.