Ulfilas (military leader)

Ulfilas Gothic Wulfila
Wulfila explaining the Gospels to the Goths
Born	ca. 311
Died	383
Children	(adopted) Auxentius of Durostorum
Writings	translated the Bible into Gothic
Offices held	Bishop of the Goths

Ulfilas (c. 311–383), also known as Ulphilas and Orphila, all Latinized forms of the Gothic Wulfila, literally "Little Wolf", was a Goth of Cappadocian Greek descent who served as a bishop and missionary, translated the Bible, and participated in the Arian controversy. He developed the Gothic alphabet in order to translate the Bible, sans Kings due to the war narratives he feared would entice the Goths, into the Gothic language.

Ulfilas' parents were of non-Gothic Cappadocian Greek origin but had been enslaved by Goths, and Ulfilas may have been born into captivity or made captive when young.Philostorgius, to whom we are indebted for much important information about Ulfilas, was a Cappadocian. He knew that the ancestors of Ulfilas had also come from Cappadocia, a region with which the Gothic community had always maintained close ties. Ulfilas's parents were captured by plundering Goths in the village of Sadagolthina in the city district of Parnassus and were carried off to Transdanubia. This supposedly took place in 264. Raised as a Goth, he later became proficient in both Greek and Latin. Ulfilas converted many among the Goths and preached an Arian Christianity, which, when they reached the western Mediterranean, set them apart from their orthodox neighbours and subjects.

Ulfilas was ordained a bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia and returned to his people to work as a missionary. In 348, in order to escape religious persecution by a Gothic chief, probably Athanaric Ulfilas obtained permission from Constantius II to migrate with his flock of converts to Moesia and settle near Nicopolis ad Istrum in modern northern Bulgaria. There, Ulfilas translated the Bible from Greek into the Gothic language and devised the Gothic alphabet. Fragments of his translation have survived, notably the Codex Argenteus held since 1648 in the University Library of Uppsala in Sweden. A parchment page of this Bible was found in 1971 in the Speyer Cathedral.