We may therefore be certain that this famous man was not the first to introduce Christianity to a Teutonic race. Nevertheless, it is with justice that Ulfilas has been described as "the Apostle of the Goths," because it was owing to his labours that a great part of the nation was won over to the faith of Christ. The discovery of a Gothic account of his life by one of his own disciples has enabled scholars to supplement and correct the prejudiced narratives of the Greek Church historians from a more authentic source.[1] There are reasons for doubting Philostorgius's statement that Ulfilas was a descendant of one of the Cappadocian captives.[2] His name is thoroughly Gothic, and his pupil Auxentius does not hint at a foreign parentage. He was born among the Goths in the year 311. We cannot test the statement of Socrates that he was converted by Theophilus, the bishop who attended the council of Nicæa. If that were correct, he would have been orthodox at first. But afterwards he was identified with one of the schools of Arianism. While quite young, probably in the year 332, when he was twenty-one years of age, he was sent to Constantinople, either as an envoy, or, as seems more likely considering his youth, as a hostage. Arianism was now dominant in the city, and naturally enough Ulfilas came under its influence. While at Constantinople he learnt Latin and Greek, and served in the minor order of a reader in the Church, probably working in the city as an evangelist to his fellow-countrymen
- ↑ See C. Anderson Scott, Ulfilas, the Apostle of the Goths, a book which is mainly founded on a Gothic MS. at the Louvre, discovered by Waitz in the year 1840, containing the life of Ulfilas by Auxentius, one of his pupils, and Arian bishop of Dorostorus (Silistria).
- ↑ Prof. Anderson Scott adduces three reasons—(1) Philostorgius, though himself a Cappadocian, writing forty years later, was less likely to know the origin of Ulfilas than people at Constantinople [surely a doubtful statement]; (2) since the Ostrogoths of the Crimea were the Gothic people who made raids on Cappadocia, it is improbable that a Cappadocian captive would be found among Gotlis of the Danube; (3) it is also improbable that young descendants in the third generation of captive from the empire would be sent to represent the Goths at Constantinople (Ulfilas, etc., pp. 50, 51).
