Nicopolis ad Istrum
A Roman city in Moesia, between the Danube and the Balkan mountains. In the sixth century Jordanes knew the Lesser Goths, whose bishop Ulfilas had been, as a people living in its district.
Nicopolis ad Istrum lay in the Roman province of Moesia, south of the Danube, in what is now northern Bulgaria. Philostorgius says that the emperor settled the Christian Goths who followed Ulfilas in Moesia (Philostorgius, Church History 2.5). Jordanes, in the sixth century, is more exact: the “Lesser Goths”, whose bishop Ulfilas had been, were living in the district of Nicopolis at the foot of Mount Haemus (Jordanes, Getica 51.267). No source says that the translation of the Bible was made in the city itself; it is given here as the centre of the community for which Ulfilas worked. See Ulfilas Translates the Bible for the Goths.
What happened here
- 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.