Vigilantia
490 – ? · Generation IX
Vigilantia was the sister of the emperor Justinian I and the mother of his successor, Justin II. She was born around 490, the daughter of Sabbatius and of a sister of the emperor Justin I, in a family from the Balkans, from near Naissus, the modern Niš. Her brother, born about 482, was adopted by their uncle Justin, who had risen from peasant soldier to emperor in 518, and became Justinian.
Only the chronicler Victor of Tunnuna names her husband, Dulcidius, also given as Dulcissimus. They had three known children: Justin, who married Sophia, a niece of the empress Theodora, Marcellus and Praejecta.
When Justinian died childless in 565, it was her son who took the throne as Justin II, and Vigilantia lived to see it. The poet Corippus, celebrating the accession in his In Praise of the Younger Justin, calls Vigilantia and Sophia divine and makes them his muses, and the historian Lynda Garland suggests that the two women may have been his real sources for events behind the scenes.
Her name also explains a puzzle about her mother. No ancient source records what Justinian’s mother was called, and scholars have long assumed she shared her daughter’s name, Vigilantia. The supposed Slavic form, Bigleniza, comes from a seventeenth-century source of doubtful authenticity.
Place in the family
- Vigilantia was a sister of Justinian I.
Parents
- Sabbatius (435 – ?)
- Vigilantia (455 – ?)
Siblings
- Justinian I (482 – 565)
Partners
- Married Dulcidius (457 – ?) — one child together
Children
- Justin II (520 – 578)
Sources
- Vigilantia · Wikipedia
- Justin II · Wikipedia