Excerpt from History for Ready Reference From the Best Historians, Biographers, and Specialists, Their Own Words in a Complete System of History for All Uses, Extending to All Countries and Subjects, and Representing for Both Readers and Students the Better and Newer, Vol. 3 of 5

A. D. 34x-381. - Conversion to Christianity. - The introduction of Christianity among the Goths seems to have begun while they were yet on the northern side of the Danube and the Black Sea. It first resulted, no doubt, from the influ ence of many Christian captives who were swept from their homes in Mmsia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and carried away to spend their lives in slavery among the barbarians. To these were probably added a considerable number of Chris tian refugees from Roman persecution, before the period of Constantine. But it was not until the time of Ulfilas, the great apostle and bishop of the Goths (supposed to have held the oflice of bishop among them from about A. D. 341 to that the development and organization of Chris tianity in the Gothic nation assumed importance. Ulfilus is represented to have been a descendant of one of the Christian captives alluded to above. Either as an ambassador or as a hostage, he seems to have passed some years in his early manhood at Constantinople. There he acquired a familiar knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and became fitted for his great work the redue ing of the Gothic language to a written form, with an alphabet partly invented, partly adapted from the Greek, and the translation of the Bible into that tongue. The early labors of Ulfilas among his countrymen beyond the Danube were inter rupted by an outbreak of persecution, which drove him, with a considerable body of Christian Goths, to seek shelter within the Roman empire. They were Permitted to settle in Moesia, at the foot of the Balkans, round about Nicopolis, and near the site of modern Tirnova. There they acquired the name of the Gothi Minores, or Lesser Goths. From this Gothic settlement of Ulfilas in Mccsia the alphabet and written lan guage to which he gave form have been called mmso-gothic. The Bible of Ulfilas - the first missionary translation of the Scriptures - with the personal labors of the apostle and his dis ciples, were powerfully influential, without doubt, in the Christianizing of the whole body of the Goths, and of their German neighbors, likewise. But Ulfilas had imbibed the doctrines of Arian ism, or of semi-arianism, at Constantinople, and be communicated that heresy (as it was branded by the Athanasian triumph) to all the barbarian world within the range of Gothic influence. It followed that, when the kingdoms of the Goths, the Vandals, and the Burgundians were estab lished in the west, they had to contend with the hostility of the orthodox or Catholic western church, and were undermined by it. That hos tility had much to do with the breaking down of those states and with the better success of the orthodox Franks - C. A. A. Scott, U lfilaa, Apostle of the Gotha - See, also, franks: A. D. 481 - 511.

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