Ulfilas
A Goth of Cappadocian descent who was bishop of the Christian Goths for forty years, led them into the Roman empire, and is credited with the Gothic alphabet and the Gothic Bible. He held the Homoian creed, which Nicene writers called Arian.
Philostorgius says that the ancestors of Ulfilas were Christians from Cappadocia taken captive by the Goths in the third century, that he was ordained bishop while on an embassy to the emperor, and that he gave Gothic a script and translated the Scriptures (Philostorgius, Church History 2.5). His pupil Auxentius gives the frame of his life: bishop at thirty, seven years among the Goths beyond the Danube, thirty-three more on Roman soil after a persecution drove him out, and death at Constantinople at seventy. Auxentius also sets out his teaching, in which the Son is God but subordinate to the Father and the Spirit subordinate to the Son (Auxentius, Letter on Ulfilas sections on his career and his creed).
Socrates records that he assented to the creed of Constantinople of 360 (Socrates, Church History 2.41) and counts him among the Arians (Socrates, Church History 4.33). The Gothic Gospels of the Codex Argenteus are the longest surviving text of the translation that goes under his name (Codex Argenteus). See Ulfilas Translates the Bible for the Goths.
In the timeline
- about AD 341, estimated dateUlfilas Translates the Bible for the Goths
Ulfilas, bishop of the Christian Goths for forty years, is credited by ancient historians with an alphabet for Gothic and a translation of the Scriptures. He held the Homoian creed, which Nicene writers called Arian. A sixth-century copy of the Gothic Gospels survives at Uppsala.