Ulfilas
ulphilas) (c.311-c.381. Bishop of “the Christians in Gothia.” Hard facts about him are scarce and amount to little more than that he translated a large part of the Bible from Greek into Gothic, involving him in the devising of a new alphabet, and that he took a leading part in the conversion of the Visigoths to a form of Arianism.* He is said to have come from north of the Danube; been consecrated (c.341) at the instigation of Eusebius of Nicomedia,* Arian bishop of Constantinople; obtained imperial permission to move his people into Roman territory south of the Danube to escape persistent persecution; and been conciliatory when Theodosius I* restored Nicene orthodoxy to the Roman Empire in 379.