Ulfilass

Ulfilas, also known as Wulfila (c. 311–383/384), was a Gothic bishop, missionary, and translator who laid the foundations of Christian Gothic communities within the Roman Empire. Born to Christian Gothic refugees, he received education in the Greek-speaking world of Cappadocia and was consecrated as bishop of the Goths by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an influential Arian church figure.

Between the 340s and 380s, Ulfilas organized Gothic Christian communities along the Danube frontier and developed the Gothic alphabet. He based the script on the Greek model, adding letters to represent Gothic sounds not found in Greek, to provide a written form for the language. He then translated the Bible into Gothic, using this alphabet to produce a text that became central to Gothic religious life.

Ulfilas’s translation is known to scholars largely through later manuscript copies, most notably the Codex Argenteus. The Gothic Bible is a major linguistic and historical source, preserving a substantial body of Early Medieval Gothic and offering important insights into Proto-Germanic vocabulary and Christian terminology of the period. The work also reflects Ulfilas’s association with Arian Christianity, which influenced the doctrinal orientation of the Gothic Church at that time.

Ulfilas is believed to have died in the mid-380s, leaving a lasting legacy through the Gothic Bible and the distinctive alphabet he created. His contributions significantly shaped the linguistic, religious, and cultural development of the Goths and the broader trajectory of early Christianization in the Germanic world.