Moses of his time. Having led his faithful flock across the Danube into Moesia, he might well have been compared by the emperor to Moses leading the Israelites from Egypt through the Red Sea. It is true that Auxentius institutes the same comparison between Ulfilas and Moses, after stating that Ulfilas had been received with great honors by Constantius. But this refers to what took place after Ulfilas had been for seven years bishop among the Goths, in 348, and does not invalidate the statement of Philostorgius as to the earlier intercourse between Ulfilas and Constantine. Sozomen (H. E. vi. 3, 7) clearly distinguishes between the first crossing of the Danube by the Goths, with Ulfilas as their ambassador, and the later attacks of Athanarich on Fridigern or Fritiger, which led to the settlement of the Goths in the Roman empire. We must suppose that after having crossed the Danube, Ulfilas remained for some time with his Goths, or at Constantinople. Auxentius says that he officiated as Lector, and it was only when he had reached the requisite age of thirty, that he was made bishop by Eusebius in 341. He passed the first seven years of his episcopate among the Goths, and the remaining thirty-three of his life "in solo Romaniæ," where he had migrated together with Fritiger and the Thervingi. There is some confusion as to the exact date of the Gothic Exodus, but it is not at all unlikely that Ulfilas acted as their leader on more than one occasion. There is little more to be learnt about Ulfilas from other sources. What is said by ecclesiastical historians about the motives of his adopting the doctrines of Arius, and his changing from one side to the other, deserves no credit. Ulfilas, according to his own confession, was always an Arian (semper sic credidi). Socrates says that Ulfilas was present at the Synod of Constantinople in 360, which may be true, though neither Auxentius nor Philostorgius mentions it. The author of the Acts of Nicetas speaks of Ulfilas as present at the Council of Nicæa, in company with Theophilus. Theophilus, it is true, signed his name as a Gothic bishop at that council, but there is nothing to confirm the statement that Ulfilas, then fourteen years of age, was with Theophilus. Ulfilas translated the whole Bible, except the Books of Kings. For the Old Testament he used the Septuagint; for the New, the Greek text; but not exactly in that form in which we have it. Unfortunately, the greater part of his work has been lost, and we have only considerable portions of the Gospels, all the genuine Epistles of St. Paul, though again not complete; fragments of a Psalm, of Ezra, and Nehemiah.1 1 Auxentius thus speaks of Ulfilas, (Waitz, p. 19:) "Et [ita prædic]-ante et per Cristum cum dilectione Deo Patri gratias agente, hæc et his similia exsequente, quadraginta annis in episcopatu gloriose florens, apostolica gratia Græcam et Latinam et Goticam linguam sine intermissione in una et sola eclesia Cristi predicavit. . . . . Qui et ipsis tribus linguis plures tractatus et multas interpretationes volentibus ad utilitatem et ad ædificationem, sibi ad æternam memoriam et mercedem post se dereliquid. Quem condigne laudare non sufficio et penitus tacere non audeo; cui plus omnium ego sum debitor, quantum et amplius in me laboravit, qui me a prima etate mea a parentibus meis discipulum suscepit et sacras litteras docuit et veritatem manifestavit et per misericordiam Dei et gratiam Cristi et carnaliter et spiritaliter ut filium suum in fide educavit. "Hic Dei providentia et Cristi misericordia propter multorum salutem in gente Gothorum de lectore triginta annorum episkopus est ordinatus, ut non solum esset heres Dei et coheres Cristi, sed et in hoc per gratiam Cristi imitator Cristi et sanctorum ejus, ut quemadmodum sanctus David triginta annorum rex et profeta est constitutus, ut regeret et doceret populum Dei et filios Hisdrael, ita et iste beatus tamquam profeta est manifestatus et sacerdos Cristi ordinatus, ut regeret et corrigeret et doceret et ædificaret Though Ulfilas belonged to the western Goths, his translation was used by all Gothic tribes, when they gentem Gothorum; quod et Deo volente et Cristo aucsiliante per ministerium ipsius admirabiliter est adinpletum, et sicuti Josef in Ægypto triginta annorum est manifes [tatus et] quemadmodum Dominus et Deus noster Jhesus Cristus Filius Dei triginta annorum secundum carnem constitutus et baptizatus, cœpit evangelium predicare et animas hominum pascere: ita et iste sanctus, ipsius Cristi dispositione et ordinatione, et in fame et penuria predicationis indifferenter agentem ipsam gentem Gothorum secundum evangelicam et apostolicam et profeticam regulam emendavit et vibere [Deo] docuit, et Cristianos, vere Cristianos esse, manifestavit et multiplicavit. "Ubi et ex invidia et operatione inimici thunc ab inreligioso et sacrilego indice Gothorum tyrannico terrore in varbarico Cristianorum persecutio est excitata, ut Satanas, qui male facere cupiebat, nolens faceret bene, ut quos desiderabat prevaricatores facere et desertores, Cristo opitulante et propugnante, fierent martyres et confessores, ut persecutor confunderetur, et qui persecutionem patiebantur, coronarentur, ut hic, qui temtabat vincere, victus erubesceret, et qui temtabantur, victores gauderent. Ubi et post multorum servorum et ancillarum Cristi gloriosum martyrium, imminente vehementer ipsa persecutione, conpletis septem annis tantummodo in episkopatum, supradictus sanctissimus vir beatus Ulfila cum grandi populo confessorum de varbarico pulsus, in solo Romanie a thu[n]c beate memorie Constantio principe honorifice est susceptus, ut sicuti Deus per Moysem de potentia et violentia Faraonis et Egyptorum po[pulum s]uum [iberavit [et Rubrum] Mare transire fecit et sibi servire providit, ita et per sepe dictum Deus confessores sancti Filii sui unigeniti de varbarico liberavit et per Danubium transire fecit, et in montibus secundum sanctorum imitationem sibi servire de[crevit] . .... eo populo in solo Romaniæ, ubi sine illis septem annis, triginta et tribus annis veritatem predicavit, ut et in hoc quorum sanctorum imitator erat [similis esset], quod quadraginta annorum spatium et tempus ut multos . . . . ..... re ct a[nn]orum . . . vita.” . . “Qu[i] c[um] precepto imperiali, conpletis quadraginta annis, .... ad Constantinopolitanam urbem ad disputationem ... to docerent et contestarent[ur] .....e .ne. p... ecias abat, et inge. e .... sibi ax ... supradictam [ci]vitatem, recogitato ei im .. de statu concilii, ne arguerentur miseris miserabiliores, proprio judicio damnati et perpetuo supplicio plectendi, statim cœpit infirmari; qua in infirmitate susceptus est ad similitudine Elisei prophete. Considerare modo oportet meritum viri, qui ad hoc duce Domino obit Constantinopolim, immo vero Cristianopolim, ut sanctus et immaculatus sacerdos Cristi a sanctis et consacerdotibus, a dignis dignus digne [per] tantum multitudinem Cristianorum pro meritis [suis] mire et gloriose honoraretur." "Unde et cum sancto Hulfila ceterisque consortibus ad alium comitatum advanced into Spain and Italy. The Gothic language died out in the ninth century, and after the extinction of the great Gothic empires, the translation of Ulfilas was lost and forgotten. But a MS. of the fifth century had been preserved in the Abbey of Werden, and towards the end of the sixteenth century, a man of the name of Arnold Mercator, who was in the service of William IV., the Landgrave of Hessia, drew attention to this old parchment containing large fragments of the translation of Ulfilas. The MS., known as the Codex Argenteus, was afterwards transferred to Prague, and when Prague was taken in 1648 by Count Königsmark, he carried this Codex to Upsala in Sweden, where it is still preserved as one of the greatest treasures. The parchment is purple, the letters in silver, and the MS. bound in solid silver. In 1818, Cardinal Mai and Count Castiglione discovered some more fragments in the Monastery of Bobbio, where they had probably been preserved ever since the Gothic empire of Theodoric the Great in Italy had been destroyed. Ulfilas must have been a man of extraordinary power to conceive, for the first time, the idea of translating the Bible into the vulgar language of his people. At his time, there existed in Europe but two languages which a Christian bishop would have thought himself justified in employing, Greek and Latin. All other languages were still considered as barbarous. It required a pro Constantinopolim venissent, ibique etiam et imperatores adissent, adque eis promissum fuisset conci[li]um, ut sanctus Aux [en]tius exposuit, [a]gnita promiss [io]ne prefati pr[e]positi heretic[i] omnibus viribu[s] institerunt u[t] lex daretur, qu[a] concilium pro[hi]beret, sed nec p[ri]vatim in domo [nec] in publico, vel i[n] quolibet loco di[s]putatio de fide haberetur, sic[ut] textus indicat [le]gis, etc." phetic sight, and a faith in the destinies of these halfsavage tribes, and a conviction also of the utter effeteness of the Roman and Byzantine empires, before a bishop could have brought himself to translate the Bible into the vulgar dialect of his barbarous countrymen. Soon after the death of Ulfilas, the number of Christian Goths at Constantinople had so much increased as to induce Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople (397– 405), to establish a church in the capital, where the service was to be read in Gothic.1 The language of Ulfilas, the Gothic, belongs, through its phonetic structure, to the Low-German class, but in its grammar it is, with few exceptions, far more primitive than the Anglo-Saxon of the Beowulf, or the Old HighGerman of Charlemagne. These few exceptions, however, are very important, for they show that it would be grammatically, and therefore historically, impossible to derive either Anglo-Saxon or High-German, or both,2 from Gothic. It would be impossible, for instance, to treat the first person plural of the indicative present, the Old High-German nerjamês, as a corruption of the Gothic nasjam; for we know, from the Sanskrit masi, the Greek mes, the Latin mus, that this was the original termination of the first person plural. Gothic is but one of the numerous dialects of the German race; some of which became the feeders of the literary languages of the British Isles, of Holland, Friesia, and of Low and High Germany, while others became extinct, and others rolled on from century to century unheeded, and without ever producing any 1 Theodoret. H. E. V., 30. 2 For instances where Old High-German is more primitive than Gothic, see Schleicher, Zeitschrift für V. S., b. iv. s. 266. Bugge, ibid., b. v. s. 59. |