Wulfila, the Gothic Bible, and the Mission to the Goths: Rethinking the ‘Apostle to the Goths’ in Terms of Homoian Theology, Conversion as a Strategy of Empire, and Fourth Century Social and Cultural Transformations

Abstract

Wulfila (c. 311–c. 383) translated the Bible into Gothic, creating the first literary text in a Germanic language. His biography is contested; his parentage, place of birth, episcopal consecration, and theological position are all disputed. The fourth century saw heated debates about the Trinity, and the Goths were often termed ‘Arians’, despite the fact that the teachings of the African presbyter Arius (c. 256–336) were not directly transmitted to them. This article notes a rebirth of interest in Wulfila, his mission, and the Gothic Bible, employing the notion that ‘Homoian’ (a more neutral term than ‘Arian’) theology was a possible bridge between Catholic monotheism and Gothic polytheism as the starting point for a re-examination of Wulfila’s evangelism as both an imperially mandated strategy and the creation of a route into civilization and modernity for the Goths. Christianity was modern and fashionable in the fourth century; Germanic tribes wishing to abandon their status as pagani (rustics) or heathens (heath-dwellers, not civilized city dwellers), viewed conversion as a move ‘up’. The Gothic Bible played a role in developing Gothic literacy, but was also a magical object, the first of its kind, a book/roadmap for a people undergoing a great cultural transformation.

Introduction

The mission of the fourth-century bishop Wulfila (‘Little Wolf’) to the Goths, and his translation of a majority of the Biblical text, creating the first literary work in a Germanic language, are acknowledged to be important events in the history of the Christianization of the late antique Germanic peoples (MacMahon 2006). Wulfila’s birth is generally dated to 310–311, and Philostorgios identified his ancestors having been among those Greek prisoners of war “of Cappadocian stock, from a village called Sadagolthina near the city of Parnassus” (Philostorgios, Historia Ecclesiastica [ed. Amidon] [p.] 20). These Christians spread their faith among their Gothic captors in the former Roman province of Dacia, north of the Danube, from 250 CE (Brennecke 2014, pp. 120–21). Sources for Wulfila’s biography are scant and fragmented (Munkhammer 2011); Auxentius, Bishop of Durosturum, who was a student and foster-son of Wulfila, wrote a biography of his spiritual father shortly after his death. However, this early testimony is not directly transmitted to modern scholars but was included in the fifth-century Latin “theological polemic”, the Dissertatio Maximini contra Ambrosium, by the Arian bishop Maximinus against Ambrose of Milan. Timothy Barnes (1990, p. 543) argues it is likely that Maximinus may have edited or altered the text of Auxentius’ letter. A second major source is the epitome of the Church History by Philostorgius (ca. 364–ca. 425) which was compiled by Photius, a ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople (Cusack 1998, pp. 39–47). These sources identify Wulfila as a Homoian (‘Arian’) and underpin what Hagith Sivan terms the “modern consensus… Ulfila’s birth in 311, consecration as bishop of the Goths by a leading Arian cleric between 337 and 341, and a mission to Gothia in the 340s” (Sivan 1996, p. 377).

Yet this “modern consensus” is beset by questions and disagreements. The bishop’s name has often been written as Ulfila, Ulfilas, or Urphila; this is due to variants in the sources by Late Antique and early medieval authors. Ernst Ebbinghaus (1991b, p. 236) explains that “Philostorgius used oυǫφίλας, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret wrote oυλφίλας, Auxentius wrote ulfila, and Cassiodorus-Iordanes wrote uulfila”. Ebbinghaus argues the Gothic form can confidently be identified as Wulfila, and this author accepts his conclusion (Ebbinghaus 1991b, p. 238). Wulfila’s birth is generally dated to 310 or 311, and his death to 382 or 383 CE (MacMahon 2006).1 However, there are disputes about the type of Christianity he espoused, which are linked to attempts to date his episcopal ordination accurately. In establishing the precise contours of his life and mission, the only agreed upon date is January 360, when Wulfila attended the Council of Constantinople, which confirms he was already a bishop at that time (Ebbinghaus 1991a, p. 311). This church synod, convened by Homoian Constantius II (reigned 337–361 CE), aimed to ordain a new Bishop of Constantinople (Eudoxius), and to promulgate a creed that could be used to judge whether bishops were “in accord or not with imperial theological policy” (Parvis 2020). Sara Parvis argues that after Constantius II died the next year, the following four Eastern emperors—Julian, Jovian, Valens, and Theodosius—perceived the 360 Council of Constantinople as mistaken in intent and tried in various ways to avoid or reverse its consequences (Parvis 2020). Further, she questions the usefulness of identifying Wulfila with Constantius II’s ‘Homoian’ creed, arguing that “to call Ulfila a homoian is to interpret a long and interesting theological, political and pastoral career, spanning most of the Arian controversy, purely in terms of one action, the signing of the 360 creed” (S. Parvis 2014, p. 51).

The fourth century commenced with Diocletian’s savage persecution of Christianity, which was then illegal. The reign of Constantine saw the toleration of Christianity after the promulgation of the Edict of Milan by Constantine and Licinius in February 313 CE (Anastos 1967). The Council of Nicaea in 325, summoned by Constantine to end the dispute between Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and the presbyter Arius, resulted in the Nicene Creed. This profession opposed the teaching of Arius that Jesus was subordinate to God the Father, not “of the same substance”. Oskar Skarsaune (1987) argues convincingly that this creed was not a ‘consensus’ text, but rather upheld Alexander of Alexandria’s position, as well as excluded that of Arius and his followers:

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ek tēs ousias] of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father [homoousion tō patri], through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead.

(cited in Leclercq 1911)

Until the late fourth century, this statement of orthodox faith was in competition with various other creeds promulgated at other church councils, and the position of Arian and other non-Nicene Christians remained, more or less, stable in barbarian lands until Recared, king of the Visigoths in Spain, abjured Homoian Christianity and embraced Catholicism in 589 CE (Koch 2014).

The twenty-month reign of Julian the Apostate, enemy of Christianity and convert to paganism in 361 CE (the year he became emperor), was a short-lived disruption of Christianity’s rise to popularity and public status as the religion of the empire. Julian died at Ctesiphon in June 363, and Christianity was restored, to become the official religion of the Roman Empire when Theodosius I promulgated the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 CE (Erhardt 1964). Theodosius summoned a council to reconcile Nicenes and Homoians in 383 CE, which Wulfila attended. He died in Constantinople and was, Neil McLynn avers (McLynn 2007, p. 134), given a public funeral hosted by the emperor, similar to that granted in the same year of 381 to Athanaric, the ‘king’ of the Visigoths who made peace with the Romans. Wulfila’s successor and former secretary, Selenus, was, according to church historian Socrates, “a Goth by his father’s side, and by his mother’s a Phrygian” (quoted in Mathisen 1997, p. 674). Sara Parvis identifies the issue at the heart of all biographies of Wulfila. He can be made to be unimportant, or his importance can be over-emphasized:

If the dials are set low, as they often are, he can disappear completely from the narratives both of the rise of the Goths and of the triumph of homoousian Christology. But if we set the dials to the maximum, he can be argued to be the man ultimately responsible both for the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and for the establishment of Nicene Christianity as the normative form of Christianity up to the present day.

(S. Parvis 2014, pp. 49–50)

Herwig Wolfram, addressing the individual fame Wulfila attained as creator of the Gothic script, translator of the Bible, and bishop of the Gothi minores (Roman Goths, those who entered imperial territory as Christians before 376 CE) notes that Wulfila’s flock in Moesia (northern Bulgaria), settling near the Roman city of Nicopolis ad Istrum (likely on the site of the later medieval capital, Veliko Tarnovo), evidently had no king or judge and that the bishop was likely to have filled these important roles (Wolfram 2013, p. 26). He considers this the result of Wulfila being of “some socio-political standing”, given that he “rose from lector to bishop without ever having been deacon or presbyter” (Wolfram 2013, p. 27). This present article charts a middle way between Parvis’s two extremes, but accepts Wolfram’s assertion of Wulfila’s high socio-political status and likely exercise of governance over the Gothi minores. I will review the evidence for Wulfila’s biography and theological formation and discuss the mission to the Goths in terms of fourth-century imperial policy (Cusack 1998). Wulfila’s posthumous fame is also addressed, primarily through an examination of the Gothic Bible translation and the surviving prestige manuscript, the Codex Argenteus (Penzl 1977, p. 12).2

1. Wulfila in His Time: Life, Theology, and Mission

Given that Wulfila was born ca. 310–311 in Gothia (modern Romania) in the community of Greeks that were forcibly transplanted there in ca. 250 CE as prisoners of war, he was of mixed ethnic and religious background. As with all minority populations, the Christian Cappadocians intermarried with local Goths and spread their religion among those they formed relationships with. Wulfila has been identified as the son of a Cappadocian mother and Gothic father, but this is not certain (Schäferdiek 2014, p. 46). Sivan observes that “the participation of Theophilus, ‘bishop of the Goths’ … in the Council of Nicaea and his subscription to its creed indicate that the tenets of orthodox Christianity infiltrated Gothia as early as 325, when Ulfila was only fourteen years old” (Sivan 1996, p. 378). He argues that this means Wulfila’s theological education was orthodox, and that he must have become a Homoian later. Herwig Wolfram concurs that Theophilus and Eutyches, both Catholic candidates for the “apostle of the Goths” title, were possible teachers and/or predecessors of Wulfila (Wolfram [1990] 1997, p. 76).3 This is uncertain, given Philostorgios, a key source for Wulfila, who was also of Cappadocian parentage and adhered to Anomoean theology, argued that Wulfila’s theological orientation was always Homoian, a position that is generally accepted in modern scholarship (Heather 1986; Dunn 2012). A reconstructed biography of Wulfila sees him as a lector at the age of thirty, and ordained bishop in the late 330s or early 340s: this matter of a few years is important, because Constantine the Great died in 337, and was baptized on his deathbed by the Homoian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia (d. c. 342), who may have met Arius as a fellow student of Lucian of Antioch (Lienhard 1987, pp. 415, 419). Eusebius of Nicomedia’s career is closely tied to the issue of Wulfila’s consecration, as Bishop of Nicomedia and later of Constantinople, and because he died shortly after the latest plausible date. Nevertheless, there are multiple problems in determining the date of this event.

Barnes notes that scholars have supported various dates from 336 CE to 341 CE, and advanced different criteria for preferring each date. Relying on Philostorgios, he argues for 336, when the Council of Constantinople “deposed Marcellus of Ancyra, attempted to force Alexander the bishop of Constantinople to accept Arius into communion, and then celebrated the tricennalia of Constantine” (Barnes 1990, p. 544). Barnes suggests that Constantine’s program for the event recalled the acts of Augustus in the Aeneid, and that other Constantinian initiatives, such as the reconquest of Dacia, recalled Trajan’s reign. As the Emperor intended to invade Persia to defend the Christians there, Wulfila’s episcopal consecration would have been apposite. This date is also preferred by Knut Schäferdiek for different reasons; he believed there is an error in Auxentius’ chronology, such that Wulfila was bishop for forty-seven years and not forty in total (Schäferdiek 1979, pp. 254–56). Richard Klein has argued the correct date was 338 CE, at the Council of Constantinople which deposed Paul and made Eusebius of Nicomedia bishop of Constantinople (Klein 1977, pp. 254–57). However, Eusebius of Nicomedia did not become Bishop of Constantinople until 339 CE. The traditional date of 341 for Wulfila’s consecration (which tallies approximately with Auxentius’ asserting he had been a bishop for forty years at the time of his death) has Constantius II as emperor, and Eusebius of Nicomedia, the consecrating bishop, occupying the see of Constantinople (Lifa 2020, p. 95).

Auxentius and Philostorgios are both emphatic that Wulfila’s theological position was Homoian. Yet multiple scholars have objected to historians drawing the line between the so-called ‘Arians’ and ‘Nicenes’ too rigidly. Joseph Lienhard, SJ argues that giving Athanasius primacy as a source distorts the picture, as many he accused of Arianism rejected both the label and some typical doctrines of Arius (Lienhard 1987, pp. 416–18). Colm Luibheid has rehabilitated Eusebius of Nicomedia’s theology, noting the three fifth-century church historians, Theodoret (who openly calls him an Arian), Socrates, and Sozomen, were all later hostile sources who focused on Eusebius’ actions, like his opposition to Alexander of Alexandria and sympathy for Arius, and discounted his theology. Luibheid argues that in Eusebius of Nicomedia’s own (admittedly scant) writings, the “letter to Paulinus of Tyre, a fragment of a letter to Arius and a description of the contents of another letter of which he was the joint author and which dates from the period after the council [of Nicaea] when he was in exile”, a more nuanced position is evident (Luibheid 1976, p. 5). After all, Eusebius of Nicomedia signed the Nicene Creed, and his exile at Constantine’s decree was because he did not support the exile of Arius; however, he was not one of two named bishops, Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais, who were recorded as objecting to the excommunication of Arius at the Council of Nicaea (Luibheid 1976, p. 14).

This perspective is valuable because Hagith Sivan has argued that there are two ways to construe Wulfila: the ‘Arian’ Wulfila of Auxentius and Philostorgios, and the ‘Nicene’ Wulfila of Theodoret (ca. 393–ca. 466), Socrates (b. c. 380), and Sozomen (d. 443). In Theodoret, the Arians, Emperor Valens, and Bishop Eudoxius of Constantinople push for a mass conversion of Goths to bring them in line with imperial policy (Arian Christianity) (Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica [Bagster edn.] 4.12). The Goths resist because they are already Nicene Christians. Wulfila, introduced as the bishop of the Goths, “prevails upon his Gothic flock (and presumably their chieftains) to convert from orthodoxy to Arianism under the false impression that no real doctrinal difference between the two positions existed” (Sivan 1996, p. 374). Sivan notes that the chronology is uncertain (for example, the conversion is linked to the Gothic crossing of the Danube in 376 CE, by which date Eudoxius had been dead for six years). Socrates mentions Wulfila in the context of the 360 Council of Constantinople, saying “Ulfila, bishop of the Goths, then for the first time assented to this [Homoian] creed; for previously he embraced that of Nicaea, being a disciple of Theophilus, who as bishop of the Goths was present at the council of Nicaea and subscribed what was decided there” (Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica [Bell edn.] 4.33; with McLynn 2007, p. 131). McLynn hypothesizes that Socrates saw Wulfila’s name among those who signed Constantius II’s Homoian creed; he then went back to the records of the Council of Nicaea and found Theophilus and concluded Wulfila had been raised in the Catholic faith as a disciple of Theophilus, which is possible but far from certain, given the spread of Christianity among the Goths by the heretical Audius, mentioned above (n. 3). Socrates then says Wulfila created the Gothic alphabet and translated the Bible, which was “a doctrinally neutral foundation for Gothic Christianity” (McLynn 2007, p. 132). Socrates then claims the martyred Goths of Athanaric’s persecution were Catholic Christians and attributes Fritigern’s conversion to Homoian Christianity to political expediency, that is, a wish to gain the favor of Valens.

Sozomen offers a broadly similar account, but focuses on the two Gothic leaders, the Pagan chieftain Athanaric and the dux Fritigern, who accepted Homoian Christianity “out of gratitude to the emperor [Valens]” (Historia ecclesiastica [Bohn edn.] 6.37; see Sivan 1996, p. 375). Sozomen thinks Wulfila was theologically orthodox but pragmatically chose to support the appointment of Eudoxius at the Council of Constantinople in 360 and was Homoian from then on. Therefore, he regards the martyrs of Athanaric’s persecution as heretics (Sozomen, Hist. eccles. 6.37, with Sivan 1996, p. 376). Sozomen’s account makes Wulfila the leader of the embassy asking permission for the Goths to settle in Roman territory (Thrace); his chronology is impossible, however, as he dates the embassy when Wulfila interceded on behalf of the Goths under attack by the Huns, requesting they be allowed to cross into the empire, to 360 CE (McLynn 2007, p. 133). Sivan agrees that Theophilus, the ‘orthodox’ bishop of the Goths who attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, was a likely formative influence on Wulfila. He argues that Wulfila “experienced a personal conversion under the expert tutelage of Eusebius of Nicomedia” and then “embarked on a missionary campaign among his own people beyond the Danube” (Sivan 1996, p. 382). This is possible but again the evidence is not strong, given that Auxentius and Philostorgios (while preserved in later texts) are the earliest commentators on Wulfila’s life and mission (Ebbinghaus 1992), and attest to his lifelong Homoianism. McLynn observes that Auxentius “assumes his readers’ assent to Ulfila’s theological soundness, his pastoral achievements, and his authority as teacher and preacher” (McLynn 2007, p. 126). He concludes that Auxentius’ audience was other Homoians in the wake of Wulfila’s death in Constantinople while at the ‘Conference of Sects’ of June 383 CE. McLynn’s shrewd suggestion that a state funeral was granted to Wulfila would explain the Nicene historians’ positive portrayal of him as the recipient of Theodosius’s favor (McLynn 2007, p. 134).

The fact that no single chronology can be applied to the sources for the life of Wulfila, despite scholarly efforts to force contradictory narratives into a consistent biography, means that assessing his legacy is difficult (Szada 2020). After the Homoian creed was promulgated by Constantius II in 360, Valens authorized no new creeds. The accession of Theodosius I, a Nicene Christian, augured ill for Homoians of all stripes. However, as McLynn observes, the emperor saw fit to grant a state funeral to the former enemy of empire Athanaric in 381 CE and likely did the same for Wulfila in 383 CE (McLynn 2007). This probably says more about Theodosius’s policy toward the Goths than theology; when he was appointed emperor by Valens’ co-ruler Gratian in 378 CE he was given responsibility for the Gothic military campaign. After three years’ fighting, he expelled the Greuthungi and they became subjects of the Huns (Cusack 1998, p. 45). Then, in 382, he settled the Tervingi in Moesia in return for military service (Schäferdiek 2014, p. 46). The crossing of the Danube in 376 by the Tervingi, if we follow Theodoret and Orosius, was led by Fritigern and possibly pastored by Wulfila, and represented a large recently converted population added to those Goths who were Christian during the war between Athanaric and Valens from 367 to 369 CE (Heather 1986, p. 292). There is no direct evidence that Fritigern allied with Wulfila; yet, to quote Socrates, “to express his sense of the obligation the emperor had conferred on him, [Fritigern] embraced the religion of his benefactor, and persuaded those who were under his authority to do the same” (Socrates, Hist. eccles. 4.33 [p. 210]). This created a group of newly baptized Goths who required instruction in the new faith and pastoral care, which seemingly only Wulfila was qualified to provide.

Although Valens mandated that the Tervingi be given food and land on which to live, he was occupied with the campaign in Persia, and they were reduced to starving indigence, and in some instances sold their children for food (Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae [ed. Rolfe] 31.4 [vol. 3, p. 407]). Heather argues that Valens aided the Tervingi to cross the Danube because he had no choice, and that sources that record his pleasure at acquiring so many new troops are “imperial propaganda, which was designed to put the best face on events” (Heather 1991). Guy Halsall contends that the Tervingi were supposed to have been disarmed after the crossing, which was effected by means of the Roman fleet, but that the scale of managing the migration exceeded planning and rapidly become uncontrollable (Halsall 2007, pp. 166–67). Fritigern’s comitatus was murdered by Romans at a banquet, and he barely escaped alive. Driven to desperate measures, the Tervingi joined with the Greuthungi and revolted; they won a decisive victory over Valens at Hadrianople on 9 August 378 CE, in which the emperor was killed (see esp. Jordanes, Getica [ed. Mierow] 26). Theodosius I then was appointed emperor by Gratian and then expelled the Greuthungi and settled the Tervingi in Moesia. There was one distinctive fact about the Theodosian settlement of the Tervingi; as A. H. M. Jones observes, the Goths “were not laeti, subjects of the empire, but foederati, a foreign state bound by treaty to Rome” (Jones 1966, p. 68). This indicates the Goths kept their tribal structure and leaders, showing the Romans struggled to contain them and “how generous they had to be to obtain a treaty” (Cusack 1998, p. 45).

2. The Mission to the Goths and the Transformation of the Late Antique Empire

Auxentius records a creed crafted by Wulfila, which is clearly not theologically Nicene, but which would have been acceptable to most Homoians:

the Father is for his part the creator of the creator while the Son is creator of all creation; and that the Father is God of the Lord, while the Son is God of the created universe … the Holy Spirit our advocate can be called neither God nor Lord, but received its being from God through the Lord … neither originator nor creator, but illuminator, sanctifier, teacher and leader, helper and petitioner and confirmer, minister of Christ and distributor of acts of grace … he [Ulfila] defended not comparable things [comparatas res] but different dispositions [differentes adfectus].

(Dunn 2012, p. 8)

It is, therefore, concluded that Wulfila’s devising of the Gothic script and translation of the Bible into Gothic were interpreted as theologically neutral actions, and the likelihood of McLynn’s suggestion that Theodosius I granted Wulfila a state funeral when he died in Constantinople in 383 CE strengthens the case for presenting him as holding Nicene-compatible beliefs in assessments by later historians who were not privy to texts circulated among Homoians and their sympathizers.

Whatever Wulfila’s theological convictions, his mission in Gothia lasted only until 347/348 CE, when Aoric, father of Athanaric, launched a persecution against the Christians. Wulfila and his flock fled south of the Danube to Moesia (now located across parts of Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria). The translation of the Bible that he undertook began around 350 CE and “despite its strong dependence on the original Greek source, embodied the idiom of the Danubian Goths” (Wolfram [1990] 1997, p. 690). Ebbinghaus affirms the Greek script as the sole model for the Gothic alphabet (Ebbinghaus 1996), and Artūrus Ratkus and Ireneusz Kida contend that original grammatical and syntactical forms are identifiable in the Gothic text of the Bible (Ratkus 2009; Kida 2009). Wolfram posits that the definition of ‘Goth’ in the fifth century had two vital criteria: “the shared Arian faith and a language which, thanks to Ulfila’s Gothic translation of the Bible, had developed into a common tongue of the court and the religious cult” (Wolfram [1990] 1997, p. 9). In 376 CE, two Gothic polities experienced transformative change. In Ukraine, the Ostrogothic king Ermanaric (ca. 291–376), whose name translates as ‘universal ruler’, suicided due to fear of the Huns, according to Ammianus Marcellinus (Res 31.3). Later, the Getica of Jordanes (24) (incorporating Cassiodorus’ Gothic History) blamed his death on a wound and celebrated his key place in the ruling Amal dynasty of Theodoric (Barnish 1984), though the Ostrogoths over whom Ermanaric ruled were a “multi-racial political unit”, and Ermanaric did not seem to be particularly honored in Ostrogothic Italy (Heather 1989, p. 105).

Closer to the boundaries of the Roman Empire, the Goths in modern Romania were known as “‘the Good’, Vesi … whom their neighbors—the ‘splendid’ Ostrogoths or Greuthungian ‘steppe and grass dwellers’—called Tervingi, ‘forest people’” (Wolfram [1990] 1997, p. 69). There were three years of military unrest between the Tervingi and the Romans from 367 to 369 CE, at which point Valens met “the Gothic leader Athanaric on board a ship in the middle of the river [Danube]” (Heather and Matthews 1991, p. 19). The result was the Treaty of Noviodunum, which freed the Goths from imperial control and established peace between the participating polities. The Tervingi crossed the Danube and entered Roman territory in 376. As previously noted, this momentous movement was linked in the writings of Late Antique church historians to the mission and person of Wulfila. Mission was understood as a technique to integrate formerly hostile peoples into the Empire by means of conversion to Christianity, creating a “bridge between barbarism and civilization” (Momigliano 1963, p. 14). However, those Goths who accepted Christianity were often persecuted by fellow Goths who stayed Pagan. There were four wars between the Romans and the Goths in Wulfila’s lifetime; this created a climate of political and religious uncertainty (Kulikowski 2007). Auxentius mentions the persecution ordered by Aoric, the father of Athanaric, in 347/348 CE, which coincides with Wulfila’s move with his flock to Moesia (Cusack 1998, p. 42). Further information about religious persecution and the vexed issue of what type of Christianity the Goths were converted to is found in the Passion of Saint Saba, the hagiography of a Catholic Goth who was martyred during the third persecution of Christians on 12 April 372 at the age of 38 (Heather and Matthews 1991, p. 103).

The Passion of Saint Saba demonstrates that Gothic villages had councils that resisted attempts to quench their independence by centralized authorities (Heather 1991). Saba came to the attention of Gothic leaders after they devised a test of conformity to the Pagan religion:

When the chief men in Gothia began to be moved against the Christians, compelling them to eat sacrificial meat, it occurred to some of the Pagans in the village in which Saba lived to make the Christians who belonged to them eat publicly before the persecutors meat that had not been sacrificed in place of that which had, hoping to preserve the innocence of their own people and at the same time to deceive the persecutors.

(Heather and Matthews 1991, pp. 112–13)

Wolfram points out that Saba resisted this attempt to preserve his life and was exiled for a time by his fellow villagers. When he returned home, the villagers tried to protect him by “swearing there were no Christians in their haims [village]” (Wolfram [1990] 1997, p. 72). Saba broke ranks, and they then swore there was only one Christian, Saba, in the village (protecting their Christian family members). Saba was again banished by Gothic authorities, and when he returned from this second absence was finally condemned to death by Atharidus, who repeated the test of consuming sacrificial meat and executed Saba when he refused to eat it (Cusack 1998, p. 43).

The primary sources are confused; both Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen claim Wulfila was still a missionary during the reign of Athanaric and conflate the anti-Christian persecutions of 348 and 369–372 CE (Cusack 1998, p. 44). However, Zeev Rubin noted that the Goths released Saba’s Sarmatian priest Sansala, who went south and crossed the Danube to avoid further trouble (Rubin 1981, p. 37; Heather 1986, p. 317). Further, Atharidus, in the Passion, appears not greatly interested in the persecution of Christians. Rubin further suggests that the Passion of Saint Saba can be harmonized with Socrates’ chronology if the following is true: Saba’s initial exile at the hands of the villagers was in 348 during the first persecution; the second exile at the hands of officials was in 369; and the outbreak when he was finally martyred in 372 CE is understood as “Athanaric’s reaction to missionary activities within his own domain, instigated by Fritigern and his allies” (Rubin 1981, p. 45). Saba was 38 at the time of his death, so Rubin’s chronology makes his first exile at the age of fourteen, which is young, but not impossibly so.4

The entry of a party of Tervingi into the Empire in 376 was politically linked to the rivalry between the anti-Christian Athanaric, who ordered the persecution of 369 CE, the same year that he had concluded the peace with Valens contracted on the Danube (mentioned above) and Fritigern, the dux or war leader who led the opposing faction (Heather 1986). Wolfram cautions that while Wulfila was likely implacably opposed to Athanaric, whom Heather confirms was a hereditary judge of the third generation (Heather 1991) and thus very powerful, there is no evidence that he was allied with Fritigern before the Tervingi crossed the Danube (Wolfram 2013, p. 29). Heather observes that the Huns’ destruction of the Greuthungian polity that pushed them westward was probably a decisive factor. Following the last great Roman historian, the Pagan Ammianus Marcellinus, Heather argues (Heather 1986, pp. 290–91) that in 376 CE two groups of Goths requested permission to cross the Danube into the Empire; Valens permitted the Tervingi under Fritigern and Alavivus, but refused the Pagan Greuthungi, who later crossed illegally and joined the Tervingi to defeat Valens at Hadrianople in 378 CE. Certain Late Antique historians, including Theodoret and Jordanes, believed conversion to Christianity was required by Valens in permitting the crossing; that may be, but as Heather’s exhaustive review of the sources reveals, the impact of the Hunnic defeat of the Greuthungi, who were forced to migrate after their king died, was an event greater than is usually acknowledged, and a likely factor in the split between the Tervingi of Athanaric and those of Fritigern and Alavivus, at least as great as the spread of Christianity among the Goths prior to the Danube crossing (Heather 1986, p. 318). It is likely that the client relationship indicated by Valens’ offer of asylum involved the Tervingi converting to Christianity (which really meant accepting the ritual of baptism), one and all.

3. After Wulfila: Germanic Homoianism, the Ostrogothic Kingdom, and the Codex Argenteus

This raises the question of why did the Visigoths and Ostrogoths retain Homoian theology after the ascendance of Theodosius I and his enforcement of Nicene orthodoxy? Maurice Wiles has shown that ‘Arians’ continued to live openly in Constantinople and throughout the empire, despite laws forbidding them to own churches or participate in religious processions, exiling their priests, and banning them from making wills (Wiles 1996). In the case of the Goths, Marta Szada demonstrates that Latin Homoian churches prospered into the later fifth century and played a strong part in the Christianization of the Goths as they moved westward through Roman territory after Hadrianople (Szada 2020, pp. 551–52). While Wulfila spread Christianity outside the boundaries of the empire and undoubtedly made converts, inside imperial boundaries and surrounded by Christian communities, existing as Pagans ceased to be an option for the Goths. As William Frend states (Frend 1976, p. 12), “the real agent of conversion was the social disintegration this vast transfer of life and custom brought about. Religious transformation followed social transformation”. Some traditional customs were retained; when Alaric I died in 411 CE, the year after his Gothic army sacked Rome, Jordanes described his funeral as follows:

His people mourned for him with the utmost affection. Then turning from its course the River Busentus [Busento] near the city of Consentia—for this stream flows with its wholesome waters from the foot of a mountain near that city—they led a band of captives into the midst of its bed to dig out a place for his grave. In the depths of this pit they buried Alaric, together with many treasures, and then turned the waters back into their channel. And that none might ever know the place, they put to death all the diggers.

(Jordanes, Get. 30 [p. 95])

Alaric I was a baptized Christian, but his funeral—in a riverbed, not a consecrated church, with treasure and slaughtered slaves—resembles that of a Homeric hero rather than a Christian monarch. Yet his brother-in-law and successor, Athaulf (d. 415), married Theodosius I’s daughter Galla Placidia, and had he not been assassinated the following year, a different future for the Visigoths can be imagined (Humphries 2007, p. 260).

Jordanes identifies the Visigoths as spreading Homoian Christianity to other tribes, specifically the Ostrogoths, Gepids, and Vandals. Edward Thompson (1962) argued the adoption of ‘Arianism’ was an attempt to preserve a distinct Germanic identity within Roman borders, and that aspects of Homoian theology—the subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit, for example—were compatible with authority structures within the tribe. Further, Thompson (1966) believed the independent nature of Homoian churches, which were a loose confederation rather than a structured pyramid under the Papacy, was more attractive to Goths as it was a familiar political structure. Lucien Musset claimed that two chance circumstances resulted in Germanic Homoian identity, namely Wulfila’s personal theological identity and the high prestige enjoyed by the Visigoths after Hadrianople. The vernacular Bible was an additional attraction that reinforced identity within the empire (Musset 1975). Marilyn Dunn extended this view to include possible compatibilities between Gothic Pagan religion and Homoianism. She argued that Jordanes shows the Goths worshipping ‘Mars’ (whom she thinks is Tiwaz, later Scandinavian Tyr, a god of war) and a group of lesser demigods, the Anses. She reasons that Homoian theology makes of the united trinity three gods, a superior (God the Father) and the subordinated Son and Holy Spirit, and that this would have been more familiar and comprehensible to the Goths (Dunn 2012, pp. 12–13). Ingemar Nordgren (2013), a specialist on Gothic Pagan religion, argues that the supreme god is Gaut, whom he sees as similar to Odin, a god of rulership, war, and death. However, he does not address the question of compatibility of religious systems, and in any case, it is difficult to find solid evidence for conceptual compatibility facilitating the transfer of belief and practice posited by Dunn.

The Tervingi/Visigoths moved further west under Athaulf, settling briefly in and around Narbonne and after his death in 415 established the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo in 418, which was Homoian until the king, Recared, accepted Catholicism in 589 CE (Koch 2014). The Greuthungi/Ostrogoths moved westward in 488, a migration that resulted in the Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric the Great (ca. 454–526), who governed from Ravenna, the capital of the western empire from 402 CE onwards.5 Unlike earlier Germanic rulers, Theodoric’s life is well documented, from the eleven years he spent as a hostage in the court of Leo I in Constantinople during the 460s and 470s to his accession to the Ostrogothic kingship in 474 and his military career in the service of the empire. Svante Fischer summarizes Theodoric’s rise to power: “he was given several Roman military commands, and performed well in the field. He held the consulate under Zeno in 484, and conquered Italy in 488–493 at Zeno’s request. Theoderic was even recognized as a legitimate ruler of Italy by Anastasius after 507… Theoderic would rule post-imperial Italy through the reigns of three consecutive Roman emperors: Zeno, Anastasius and Justin I” (Fischer 2013, pp. 97–98).

The last emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed and exiled in 476 CE by the Sciriian Odoacer, the first barbarian king of Italy. Theodoric killed Odoacer at a banquet in 493 and established a court at Ravenna that promoted Homoian Christianity while maintaining courteous relations with the Papacy (Cusack 1998, p. 49). During his reign, Ravenna was enhanced by the construction of beautiful religious buildings, including the Arian Baptistery, which survives in a partial state, the palatine chapel of Sant’ Apollinaire Nuovo, and Theodoric’s own mausoleum (Schäferdiek 2014, p. 48). The achievements of the Homoian Germanic kingdoms are “also attested in law codes issued by the… kings of the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Ostrogoths…three great codes, the Lex Romana Visigothorum, the Lex Burgundionum, and the Edict of Theodoric, all show the king as central to the nation…” (Cusack 1998, p. 50). Yet Fischer argues that there is ambiguity about Theodoric’s relationship to texts, with hostile propaganda asserting his illiteracy, despite the fact that he was functionally literate in several languages:

Theodoric probably had a ‘functional literacy’ of Latin with reading skills in Latin capitals, including numbers and acronyms. He was probably able to identify different monograms (although this may have been a matter of ideographic recognition of a totality rather than graphematic deconstruction). Theoderic understood the concept of separate writing systems, such as Greek and Latin. He also understood the difference between Catholicism, Arianism, and paganism. Although unable to read the late 4th century Gothic alphabet of Wulfila, he must have appreciated its Arian ideological value, excluding Greek and Latin Catholic literati of the early 6th century.

(Fischer 2013, p. 99)

This is important because it is certain that the production of the Codex Argenteus, a luxury manuscript that Theodoric could not read, is associated with him (Fischer 2013, p. 109). It is probable that Theodoric and his Ostrogothic advisers and clergy recognized the significance of a written version of their language, which linked them both to their Pagan ancestral culture and to Christianity, in that Wulfila had rendered the Bible, the holiest text for all Christians, into Gothic. This is despite the fact that literacy in Gothic seems not to have gained much traction (Lee 1993, p. 28). Fischer ties the Codex Argenteus and Theodoric’s mausoleum together, which may well be true, in that it could have been made to commemorate his death (in the fashion of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels, produced to honor Saint Cuthbert, abbot of Lindisfarne) (Fischer 2013, p. 110).

The Codex Argenteus (Silver Bible), a manuscript written in silver ink on purple vellum pages, which is housed at the Uppsala University Library, Sweden, is the primary text that preserves the Gothic alphabet devised by Wulfila, and the translation of parts of the Bible which he undertook from ca. 350 CE (Lendinara 1992). The book probably had its origins in the kingdom of Theodoric (454–526 CE) and dates from the 520s, perhaps having been made for his funeral and interment (Munkhammer 2011, p. 47). The manuscript was acquired for Uppsala University by Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (1622–1686) in 1668 or 1669. He commissioned a splendid new binding, “a casing of beaten silver” (McKeown 2005, p. 9), designed by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl (1628–1698) and made by silversmith “Hans Bengtsson Selling († 1688)” (McKeown 2005, p. 10). Interestingly, Wulfila’s translation of the Bible into Gothic was associated with Protestantism by these early modern Swedes. The freeing of scripture from the mandated Latin of the Catholic Church was clear to seventeenth century scholars; as Simon McKeown states, “Wulfila (c. 311–383 AD) and Jerome (c. 342–420 AD) were close contemporaries, with the crucial seniority lying with Wulfila. The Gothic Bible, therefore, could be confirmed as pre-dating the Vulgate of Jerome and having claim to greater authority and legitimacy” (McKeown 2005, p. 25). This link between Wulfila and Martin Luther (1483–1546) has been explored by Paul Greiner, who notes that both translators worked from a Greek text (in Wulfila’s case likely the Antiochene-Byzantine recension of Lucian the Martyr [ca. 312]) and rendered scripture into a Germanic language (Greiner 1992). The purported geographical connection between the Goths and the Swedes made the Codex Argenteus particularly valuable, and Protestants in the nineteenth century recognized the genealogy of vernacular, non-Roman Christianity embodied in this magnificent text (Carter 1893).

Patrizia Lendinara has studied the fame of Wulfila as the deviser of the Gothic script and translator of the Bible in the early Middle Ages, in particular among a range of Christian scholars including Isidore of Seville, Julian of Toledo, Michael the Syrian, and Remigius of Auxerre and in anonymous texts, like the Abecedarium Nord[mannicum] of St Gallen and the Ioca monachorum from Sélestat. Eugene of Toledo’s De inuentoribus litterarum praises Wulfila highly, in the company of other distinguished devisers of alphabets:

First Moses created the Hebrew letters; the Phoenicians cleverly founded the Attic [=the Greek alphabet!]; Nicostrata produced the ones which we Latins write; Abraham discovered the Syriac, and the same man the Chaldaic; Isis with no less art brought forth the Egyptian; Gulfila brought forth the Goths’ letters, which we see are the latest.

(Lendinara 1992, p. 221)

While later medieval authors seem to know little about Wulfila (even the fact he was a bishop is neglected), his fame as creator of the Gothic script and translator of the Bible (save for the Books of Kings) was secure.

However, only the Codex Argenteus testifies to his activity in any substantial way, preserving much of “the New Testament Gospels and Epistles; the … surviving remnants of the Old Testament are chapters 5–7 of Nehemiah” (Krause and Slocum 2024). Todd Krause and Jonathan Slocum list other Gothic texts that contain parts of Wulfila’s translation:

The Codex Gissensis was found in Egypt in 1907. This consisted of four pages containing verses from Luke 23–24 in Latin and Gothic. It was subsequently ruined by water damage.

The Codex Carolinus is a palimpsest consisting of four leaves and containing verses from the Epistle to the Romans in both Latin and Gothic. It was found in the abbey of Weissenburg, though it originally belonged to the monastery at Bobbio in Liguria. It now resides in the Wolfenbuettel library.

The Codices Ambrosiani are likewise palimpsests. There are five of these codices, labelled A–E. Codex A contains 102 leaves, of which 6 are blank and another illegible. This contains various segments of the Epistles, as well as one page of a calendar. Codex B contains 78 leaves, which have the complete text of II Corinthians as well as parts of other Epistles. Codex C has two leaves, containing Matthew 25–27. Codex D contains three leaves, showing part of the book of Nehemiah … Codex E contains eight leaves. In these survive [sic] a document, given the title Skeireins aíwaggēljons þaírh Iōhannēn ‘Explanation of the Gospel according to John’ by the editor Massmann in 1834, generally referred to simply as the Skeireins. The author of this commentary is not known; though possibly written by Wulfila, there is no evidence of this.

(Krause and Slocum 2024)

Gothic, the only recorded East Germanic language, otherwise survives only in a handful of fragments, some of which have been lost. The most important of these is likely the Gothica Bononiensia (Bologna Fragment), a two-page palimpsest discovered in 2013 in the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna (Wolfe 2016). The survival of Gothic due to Wulfila’s Bible is remarkable; the languages of other East Germanic peoples (Rugians, Burgundians, Gepids, Vandals, and others) were unwritten and thus are lost entirely, apart from a small number of personal names (Highlander 2014). This fact adds immeasurably to the linguistic and cultural importance of the Codex Argenteus.

Conclusions

This article has reviewed evidence for the “Apostle of the Goths” Wulfila, steering a path between those scholarly views that would make of him an agent of major social change: from the conversion of a number of Tervingi to their settlement in Moesia south of the Danube through the unintended influx of Greuthungi into imperial territory, resulting in the death of an eastern Roman emperor, Valens, at Hadrianople and culminating in the end of the Western empire due to the skills and ambition of Theodoric the Ostrogoth (S. Parvis 2014), and those views that would dismiss him as insignificant and merely a named individual who has been made too much of (Szada 2020). The fourth century was a tumultuous era in which Christianity progressed from being an illegal cult in the first decade (Anastos 1967) to the mandated religion of the empire by the last decade (Erhardt 1964). Wulfila lived through eight of the ten decades of this century of change, and as a Christian, a Goth (with some Greek ancestry), and a bishop, he was actively engaged in a geographical region (the former province of Dacia and the imperial territory of Moesia) where the Tervingi and later the Greuthungi (the future Visigoths and Ostrogoths) (Wolfram [1990] 1997, p. 69) were at war with Rome for substantial periods of time, yet were also engaged in trade, religious communication such as mission, and finally asylum seeking as the pressure of the Hunnic migration forced them south of the Danube (Heather 1986, p. 318). While his missionary and pastoral activities are worthy of attention, it is the time from 347/8 when he leads the Tervingi Christians into Moesia and devotes his time to the devising of the Gothic alphabet and the translation of the bulk of the Bible that cemented his fame for posterity (Musset 1975; McLynn 2007).

Wulfila’s Homoian theology and his Bible translation are linked in a particular way. I follow those scholars who contend that firming the division between so-called ‘Arians’ and ‘Nicenes’ too early in the fourth century is anachronistic and misleading as to the actual development of Christianity as an institutional faith and Christological doctrine in particular (Lienhard 1987; Luibheid 1976). The various doctrinal parties have recently benefitted from careful, nuanced scholarship that emphasizes the prevalence of what used to be called ‘semi-Arianism’ but which is now generally referred to as ‘Homoian’ theology. This term includes a broader group of priests and bishops and their flocks and clarifies that ‘Arian’ is an incorrect designator for those who never encountered Arius, or his teachings, directly (Dunn 2012). As Wolfram persuasively argues, “Vulfila’s position was pre-Nicene … he was against borrowing the concepts of substantia and οὐσία from Greek philosophy to confess the Holy Trinity, the essential identity of the three divine persons, as the fathers did in 325. Vulfila was, rather, an homoean from Greek ὁμοĩος, similar, and believed himself to be Catholic as did his fellow-believers down to the 6th century” (Wolfram 2013, p. 31). This is similar to the context of Wulfila’s Bible translation, which preceded Jerome’s Vulgate and used a Greek original, likely the Antiochene-Byzantine recension of Lucian the Martyr (ca. 312) that is now non-standard but was at the time available to those Christians literate in Greek.

These considerations render Wulfila’s evangelistic and pastoral role among the Goths less problematic when it is considered as an imperial strategy, both of enculturating and pacifying aggressive barbarian neighbors (Momigliano 1963; Cusack 1998). Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, the conversion of the Tervingi and the Greuthungi created for these pagani (rustics) a path into modernity as it existed in the urbanized, multi-cultural late Roman Empire. Conversion brought advantages, most obviously seen in the offer of asylum Valens made to Fritigern and Alavivus in 376 CE; crossing the Danube preserved them from the Huns and the instability of unprotected, primarily rural life. Wulfila’s rendition of Gothic into a written language was part of this process of bringing his people into a sophisticated, educated, ‘modern’ fourth-century society. There is no doubt that later Goths, such as Theodoric the Great, recognized the significance of having their traditional language preserved in the written form of the Bible (Fischer 2013). I have also examined the contention that Homoian theology made conversion easier for the Pagan Goths, and the related claim that the retention of Homoian theology after the triumph of Nicene Catholicism was enacted by Theodosius I in the Edict of Thessalonica preserved Gothic ethnic identity. It is possible that the three persons emphasis in Homoianism was closer to polytheism than the united trinitarian god of the Nicenes; however, I conclude that speculative new work like Dunn’s cognitivist approach are as yet nascent and suggestive, rather than convincing.

The argument that the Visigoths and Ostrogoths retained Homoian views into the sixth century as a mark of ethic distinctiveness has greater credibility but is also not conclusively demonstrated (Thompson 1962, 1966). Yet the production of the marvelous Codex Argenteus in the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, probably to commemorate Theodoric around or after his death in 526 CE, and the erection of his magnificent and wholly distinctive mausoleum to house his body, reflect awareness that Romanitas, Christianity, literacy, cities, and all the other material and cultural trappings of the empire which the Goths entered as refugees exercised great fascination for these recently semi-nomadic, pastoral peoples (Schäferdiek 2014). In the twenty-first century, the Codex Argenteus is a significant piece of world heritage, its value pronounced by UNESCO during the 1700th anniversary of Wulfila’s birth, 2011, when there were important academic and heritage events held in Uppsala to celebrate the survival of the manuscript and the innovation of Wulfila in creating the script in which it is written and the vernacular Bible translation which is now linked to modern concerns such as the Protestant Reformation (Greiner 1992). Contemporary scholars recognize that certain heritage objects are powerful and ‘magical’ beyond their utilitarian usages, containing the hopes and dreams of people from distant epochs and faraway lands. The Gothic Bible was the first of its kind, a written text in a Germanic language (MacMahon 2006). Accidentally, Gothic became the only preserved East Germanic language because of Wulfila’s script and translation: the Gothic Bible stands at the crossroads of Late Antiquity and the early medieval era, at the meeting place of Romans and Goths and at the flashpoint of orthodox and ‘heretical’ theology, and the Codex Argenteus survives as a testimony to the cultural sophistication of Ostrogothic Italy and the importance of the great transformation wrought in the fourth century for both Romans and Goths.6