Ulfilas (Wulfila)

Ulfilas converted the Goths to Christianity and invented an alphabet to translate the Bible for them. Born around 311, probably north of the Danube, he was descended from Cappadocian Christians captured in a Gothic raid on Anatolia in the third century, and so grew up bilingual in Gothic and Greek — the qualification that made his work possible. He travelled to Constantinople, possibly as part of an embassy, and was consecrated bishop of the Goths around 341 by Eusebius of Nicomedia, who held the Arian position that the Son is subordinate to the Father. Ulfilas therefore preached a non-Nicene Christianity, and the Goths and after them the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Burgundians and Lombards were Arian for centuries — which set the Germanic kingdoms of the west in religious opposition to the Roman populations they ruled, with consequences that ran to the sixth century and beyond. He worked as a missionary north of the Danube for seven years until persecution by a Gothic chief drove him and his followers south into Roman territory, where they were settled near Nicopolis in Moesia. He then translated the Bible into Gothic. Gothic had no written form beyond runes, which carried pagan associations, so he devised an alphabet from Greek, Latin and runic letters. The translation is the earliest substantial text in any Germanic language and the principal source for the whole family. He is reported to have omitted the books of Kings, on the grounds that the Goths were warlike enough already. Fragments survive, chiefly in the Codex Argenteus, written in silver and gold on purple parchment. He died in Constantinople around 383.

• Lived: 311 CE – 383 CE
• Nationality: German
• Roles: religious_leader, scholar