Ulfilas Translates the Bible for the Goths

Philostorgius, a fifth-century church historian who admired Ulfilas and whose work survives in a later summary, says that his forebears were Cappadocians carried off in a Gothic raid in the time of the emperors Valerian and Gallienus, and that such captives had first brought Christianity to their captors (Philostorgius, Church History 2.5). His pupil Auxentius says that he was a lector before he was made bishop for the Goths at the age of thirty (Auxentius, Letter on Ulfilas sections on his ordination and flight). Philostorgius adds that he had come to the imperial court on an embassy and was ordained by Eusebius and the bishops with him (Philostorgius, Church History 2.5).

Auxentius relates that after seven years a Gothic ruler began to persecute the Christians, and that Ulfilas led a large body of them across the Danube; the emperor Constantius II received them (Auxentius, Letter on Ulfilas sections on his ordination and flight), and Philostorgius says that they were settled in Moesia (Philostorgius, Church History 2.5). Two centuries later Jordanes knew their descendants, the “Lesser Goths”, as a poor and peaceful people living around Nicopolis ad Istrum at the foot of Mount Haemus (Jordanes, Getica 51.267).

Philostorgius says that Ulfilas gave the Gothic language a written form and translated all the Scriptures except the books of Kings, which he left out because the Goths were warlike enough already (Philostorgius, Church History 2.5). Socrates likewise credits him with inventing the Gothic letters and translating the Scriptures (Socrates, Church History 4.33). Auxentius does not mention the translation, but says that he preached and wrote in Greek, Latin and Gothic (Auxentius, Letter on Ulfilas sections on his teaching and his creed). The longest surviving Gothic text is the Codex Argenteus at Uppsala, a copy of the four Gospels in Gothic written in silver and gold ink on purple parchment in Italy in the early sixth century (Codex Argenteus).

Socrates notes that Ulfilas assented to the creed of Constantinople of 360, which says that the Son is like the Father as the Scriptures teach and forbids speaking of substance at all (Socrates, Church History 2.41). Historians call this position Homoian, from the Greek word for “like”. Auxentius records that he opposed both the Nicene “of one substance” and the compromise “of like substance”, and taught that the Son is God but second to the Father and obedient to him, and the Holy Spirit subject to the Son; he quotes the creed Ulfilas left at his death (Auxentius, Letter on Ulfilas sections on his teaching and his creed). Nicene writers such as Socrates and Theodoret call this teaching Arian (Socrates, Church History 4.33) (Theodoret, Church History 4.33).

He died at Constantinople, aged seventy, after forty years as bishop (Auxentius, Letter on Ulfilas sections on his death at Constantinople). Theodoret, in the next century, says that the Goths still held that the Father is greater than the Son (Theodoret, Church History 4.33). For the later history of this teaching among the Visigoths see the Visigoths Turn Catholic at Toledo.