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Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. III: The Ec...

Ecclesiastical HistoryJeromeTheodoret

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This is a chapter from an ecclesiastical history (likely Theodoret of Cyrrhus's *Historia Ecclesiastica*), recounting the late 4th-century conflict between the Arian empress Justina and Bishop Ambrose of Milan. The central narrative concerns Justina, widow of Emperor Valentinian I, who had concealed her Arian sympathies during her husband's orthodox reign but moved to promote Arianism through her pliable young son, the emperor Valentinian II. When the young emperor approached Ambrose hoping to win him over to Arianism, Ambrose refused, defending Nicene orthodoxy and urging the emperor to honor his father's faith. The confrontation escalated to Valentinian surrounding the church with soldiers and ordering Ambrose's expulsion, to which Ambrose responded with defiant willingness to be martyred rather than surrender the church to what he called blasphemers. The chapter portrays Ambrose as unshakeable in the face of imperial pressure, and Justina as the manipulative villain who exploited maternal influence over a weak-willed ruler to advance heresy. The footnotes place these events precisely — the key confrontation at Easter 385 — and cite Ambrose's own letters as primary sources, flagging a noted error in Gibbon's account of the episode.

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