TEXT
ULFILAS
ULFILAS (Gothic Wulfila) was born about the year 311 A.D., but where his birthplace was in the wide tract of country then inhabited by the Goths is not known. Although Ulfilas was born and grew up among the Goths, he was of Cappadocian descent. According to the testimony of the historian Philostor-gius, the parents, or perhaps rather the grandparents, of Ulfilas were natives of Sadagolthína, near the town of Parnassus in Cappadocia, who had been carried off as captives by the Goths, during an irruption made by this people into the northern parts of Asia Minor in the year 264.
In the year 336 he accompanied an embassy to Constantinople, where he remained until 341. In the latter year he was consecrated bishop of the Goths dwelling North of the Danube. For seven years (341-8) he laboured zealously among the Goths in Dacia, and won over a great multitude of them to the Christian faith. But the persecution and oppression, which Ulfilas and his converts suffered through Athanaric, became so great that he applied to Constantinus in 348 for permission to lead his converts into Roman territory. Constantinus readily granted the request, and Ulfilas accordingly led a great number of his people across the Danube, and settled near Nicopolis in Moesia, at the foot of the Balkan mountains, where he preached and laboured until his death, which took place in 383 while on a visit to Constantinople.
By far the most important source of our knowledge of the life and work of Ulfilas is found in the account of him given by Auxentius, from which we extract the following passage (for the full account the reader must be referred to the work: ' Uber das Leben und die Lehre des Ulfila,' by G. Waitz, Hannover, 1840).
' Eo i/a f>rafdíca,rtíe et per Cristum cum dilectione deo patri gratias agente haec et his similia exsequente, quadraginta annis
O 2