gelistic work than with theological controvery, he may have been thankful for a simple form of Christianity that he could make intelligible to his rough fellow-countrymen more easily than one which was involved in subtle Greek metaphysics. There is no ground for the malignant insinuation of orthodox Church writers, that Ulfilas adopted Arianism in a bargain with the Emperor Valens when seeking protection from the persecution of the pagan Goths. He states in his will that he had always held the same principles.[1] The probability is that the Goths were already Arians of the mild, non-metaphysical type. Arianism was strong in Mœsia and along the line of the Danube, and the natural explanation of the facts is that Ulfilas and his people were simply carried with the current of their times and became Arian without ever supposing that they were adopting a specifically heretical position.
The result, however, was curiously complicated. In the first place, it was a great thing for Europe that when the Goths poured over Italy and even captured Rome they came as a Christian people, reverencing and sparing the churches, and abstaining from those barbarities that accompanied the invasion of Britain by the heathen Saxons. But, in the second place, many of these simple Gothic Christians learned to their surprise that they were heretics, and that only when their efforts towards fraternising with their fellow-Christians in the orthodox Church were angrily resented.
Ulfilas supplemented his direct missionary work by his writings; above all, by his translation of the Bible into the Gothic language. For this purpose he had to create an alphabet, since previously the art of writing was unknown among the Goths. Thus he is really the founder of Teutonic literature—that great literature which afterwards blossomed out in Chaucer, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe. Ulfilasus omitted the Book of Kings from his translation because of their warlike character—lie considered that his people did not need Scriptural
- ↑ Ego Ulphilas semper sic credidi.
