Justine en Jézabel. La fabrication textuelle d’une mauvaise impératrice romaine dans la première moitié du Ve siècle.

International audienceAs a controversial female character of the end of the 4th century AD, Empress Justina suffers a hostile literary tradition, as the sharp quill of Christian authors is always delivering of her a denigrating portrait. Mainly known for her beauty and opposition to the nicean bishop Ambrose of Milan by the years 384-386, she is considered as an embodiment of the bad Empress. Scrutinising the contemporary evidence of this confrontation between both the empress and bishop, this study aims to demonstrate how, based on Ambrose’s Letter 20 to his sister Marcellina, in which he compares Justina to Jezabel, the later texts carry out a continuous literary trial against this empress. Therefore, the figure of Justina herself is vanishing behind a topical negative character, shaped by the authors, and continuously validated by a repetition of ever similar clichés