Valentinian II appealed to the Eastern emperor, Theodosius, for vindication against Maximus; Theodosius complied, but made Valentinian II's embrace of Nicene Christianity and, more importantly, Theodosius's marriage to the younger emperor's sister preconditions for his military support.
In the West, Ambrose could still place confidence in his mentoring relationship with "his" convert, Valentinian II. (35) Ambrose enjoyed considerable security, both in his own position as bishop of a city that had been, thanks to him, recently blessed with the discovery of its own martyrs, and as adviser to two emperors.
See also Brian Croke, "Arbogast and the Death of Valentinian II," Historia 25 (1976): 23544.
(35) In his letter to Theodosius after Valentinian II's death, Ambrose thus portrays the latter as one who "was so tenderly attached to myself, as to love one whom he had before persecuted, and to esteem as his father the man whom he had before repulsed as his enemy" (Ep.
In his funeral oration on Valentinian II, from 391, the main resource for Ambrose's descriptions of unity between persons, both living and dead, is the Song of Songs.
Beyond the rates of Satyrus or Valentinian II, however, the political force of Ambrose's expansive bodies has a major impact on what has become known as the Milanese basilica crisis; indeed, it is possible that Ambrose's enthusiastic posthumous praise for Gratian and Valentinian II in 391 is partly spurred by the remembrance of the difficulties he had with them in this period.
Late in the year 379 or early in the year 380, the emperor Valentinian II, then aged nine, had taken up residence in Milan along with his mother the empress Justina; the Milanese imperial court favored homoian Christianity.
McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 68-78 (on Satyrus), 330-41 (on Valentinian II), and 353-60 (on Theodosius).
Symmachus,
Valentinian II) are missing from the index.
By the autumn of 378 the court of the boy emperor
Valentinian II had taken occupation of the imperial residence of Milan, having been granted temporary refuge by Gratian during the aftermath of the battle of Hadrianople.