Germanus Justinus

Germanus (died 551) was a general of the Byzantine Empire and member of the Justinian Dynasty.

The cousin of Justinian I was placed in charge of Imperial forces in the Gothic War in 550. Though he married a lady of the noble family of the Anicii, a Roman family which had moved to Constantinople, he was eventually married to Matasuntha, the heiress of the Gothic queen Amalasuntha, and the widow of the defeated Gothic king, Witiges. She was made a Roman patricius, but any schemes for a revived Romano-Gothic kingdom which may have been based on his personality were prevented by Germanus' early death. " His widow, however, bore a posthumous child, also named Germanus, of whom Jordanes speaks as blending the blood of the Anicii and the Amals, and furnishing a hope under the divine blessing of one day uniting their glories. This younger Germanus did nothing in his life to realize these anticipations; but the somewhat pointed way in which his name and his mother's name are mentioned by Jordanes lends some probability to the view that he hoped for the child's succession to the Eastern Empire, and the final reconciliation of the Goths and Romans in the person of a Gotho-Roman emperor." ("Encyclopaedia Britannica" 1911 "Jordanes").