other · 350 · Constantinople
Ulfilas was descended from Cappadocian Christians carried off in a Gothic raid, was raised among the Goths, and was consecrated bishop about 341 to serve them. Driven south of the Danube with his converts, he spent thirty years on the work he is remembered for: an alphabet built out of Greek, Latin and runic letters, and a translation of almost the whole Bible into Gothic. The fragments that survive, chiefly in the silver-and-gold Codex Argenteus at Uppsala, are the oldest substantial text in any Germanic language, and much of what is known about early Germanic grammar is known from them. The story that he left out the books of Kings, on the ground that the Goths needed no encouragement in war, is told by Philostorgius and is too good to omit and too neat to trust; it is given here as a story. The consequence that matters is doctrinal. Ulfilas was a homoian — an Arian in the loose sense the fourth century used — and the Goths, and after them the Vandals, Lombards and Burgundians, were Arian Christians for centuries because of him. Nearly every conflict between Germanic kings and Roman bishops in this dataset descends from that fact, including the exile of Fulgentius at seed 196 and the world Boethius died in.
How do you translate scripture into a language with no writing?
You invent the writing first.