Wulfila

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Leaf from the Silver Bible ( Codex argenteus ).

Wulfila [ ˈvʊlfila ] ( Latinized Ulfilas , ancient Greek Οὐλφίλας Oulphílas , also Οὐρφίλας Ourphílas ; * around 311 ; † 383 in Constantinople ) was a Gothic theologian and one of the first, if not the first bishop of Terwingen . His special merit is the translation of parts of the Bible into the Gothic script he developed for this purpose , received as Codex Argenteus (see also Wulfilabibel ) with the Gothic version of the Lord's Prayer .

Surname

Wulfila's name is recorded in Latin as ulfila and uulfila , in Greek as οὐλφιλας oulphilas and, probably with secondary dissimilation , as οιρφιλας ourphilas and in Syrian as ʾurufilʾ . * Wulfila , diminutive of wulfs 'wolf', is usually adopted as the Gothic starting form . Knut Schäferdiek , on the other hand, uses * Ulfila as the more likely phonetic figure, because it corresponds more precisely to the spelling in Wulfila's creed recorded by his pupil Auxentius ; The disappearance of the initial w in the second part of compound personal names is well documented in other Germanic languages ​​(but not in Gothic) (cf. Rudolf , Adolf etc.) and could easily have been adopted in a pet form derived from them. The alleged Wulfila seal - a seal with the inscription ΟΥΡΦΙΛΑ (OURPHILA) discovered in Corfu in 1875 - must be regarded as a forgery because of the spelling with r ; In addition, a Latin inscription is to be expected for an original Wulfila's seal.

Ancient sources

The most detailed source of Wulfila's life story is a letter on Wulfila's Vita written by his pupil Auxentius von Dorostorum (today's Silistra in Bulgaria ) - made known by Friedrich Kauffmann under the title De vita et obitu Ulfilae ("About life and death Ulfilas") - , which was inserted within the so-called Dissertatio Maximini contra Ambrosium . This polemical- apologetic pamphlet by a “homoic” Christian against Bishop Ambrosius of Milan , probably written in 383, also reproduces Wulfila's personal creed.

The letter of Auxentius reproduced in the Dissertatio Maximini portrays and stylizes Wulfila as one of the first fighters of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Wulfila's certification is based on a relative chronology, which seeks to show consistent dates between Wulfila's life and those of biblical people. They are often used in the modern tradition of representation. However, the Christian historiagraphy is not comparable with the modern chronological historiography . The chronological dates of the treatise are, on the one hand, strongly politicizing and, on the other hand, do not agree with the objectively transmitted or accessible dates for Bishop Wulfila's term of office. The use of the chronological data from this letter in the dissertation is therefore fraught with difficulties. The manuscript of the Dissertatio Maximini , together with the letter of Auxentius reproduced in the margins of the manuscript, was discovered in the Codex latinus 8907 of the Paris National Library in 1840 and has survived in poor condition.

Another main source of Wulfila's life story is the tradition from a Greek, 'Arian' source, possibly including a Vita Wufilas: the church history of the heterousian Philostorgios, which was created in the years 425 to 433 and only survived in later excerpts .

The late antique church histories of Socrates Scholastikos , Sozomenos and Theodoret from the 5th century and the Getica des Jordanes from the 6th century provide little information about Wulfila. In contrast to Axentius, the sometimes contradicting authors are classified as historiographers. Then there are Isidore of Seville with his Historia Gothorum , written in the 6th century, and Walahfrid Strabo in the 9th century. The mention of Wulfila in Cassiodor's Historia ecclesiastica tripartita is completely insignificant .

Life

Wulfila's ancestors were Christians living in Cappadocia who were kidnapped by Goths in 257. It is assumed that Wulfila himself had a purely Gothic parent; it is usually assumed that this was the father. If there was a non-Gothic parent, this should not have played a decisive role in the socialization of Wulfila, who grew up in the third generation among the Goths: his contemporaries considered him a Goth.

The imperial bishop of Constantinople , Eusebius of Nicomedia , consecrated Wulfila in 336, at the latest in 341 in Antioch as "Bishop of Christians in the Gothic Land". Until 348 Wulfila was missionary in what was then the territory of the Terwingen on the lower Danube. The onset of resistance among the peoples to the Christian missionary attempts drove Wulfila and other Gentile Christians to the Romans , who settled them in the province of Moesia secunda near Nicopolis in what is now northern Bulgaria .

In this exile on the territory of the Roman Empire, Wulfila developed a script for Gothic , which was previously a largely scriptless language. Only a few inscriptions and magical texts were recorded in runes until then . Furthermore, a translation of the Bible into Gothic, the so-called Wulfilabibel , was created under the direction of Wulfila .

At the Synod in Constantinople at the beginning of 360, which in scientific literature is sometimes referred to as the Synod of the Acacians (after the very influential Bishop Acacius of Caesarea ), and sometimes the Enkänien Synod , Wulfila signed the so-called imperial dogma , the under the Directed by Emperor Constantius II. Adopted and binding for the Church, "homoic" creed, which should offer a compromise in the decades-long dispute about the "correct" doctrine of the Trinity .

In 381 Wulfila tried in vain at the Council of Constantinople to prevent the condemnation of Arianism , but in the second canon he reached the formulation: “The churches of God among the barbarian peoples should be governed according to the way that already ruled among the fathers »... This created the space in which Arianism ... could maintain itself as Gothic-Vandal tribal churches."

Wulfila died in 383 immediately after his arrival in Constantinople, where Emperor Theodosius I had called a synod of various church parties. He is buried there.

Teaching

Scene: First Council of Constantinople, book illumination, homilies of Gregory of Nazianzen (879–882), BnF MS grec 510, folio 355; Participants in the council were u. a. Acacius of Beroea , Gregory of Nazianz , Maruthas of Sophene and Tagrith , Meletius of Antioch (chair), Peter of Sebaste , Wulfila (dies immediately after his arrival).

Wulfila is referred to in the synodal history as a representative of the homoic church parties . Eusebius, who had ordained Wulfila as bishop, belonged to the "Origenist middle group" of Origenist theology. Accordingly, Wulfila was probably shaped by this direction of Christianity, from which two further sub-directions developed from around 358, u. a. the Christology of the so-called "homeers". Wulfila then apparently took over typical confession formulas of the Homoeists. For him, Christ was the adorable “God and Lord”.

The assertion that was widespread in the first half of the 20th century, especially in German-speaking countries and occasionally still widespread in popular representations, that Wulfila had adapted his theology to Gothic or Germanic cultural tradition in order to facilitate reception among the Goths, has no scientific basis.

reception

mission

In addition to the Visigoths, who converted to Christianity as a group, the Ostrogoths , Vandals , Longobards and Burgundians also became Christian as a result of his activities. Since the Goths, like other Germanic groups in the Roman Empire, were regarded as federates and not as Roman citizens, they did not affect the heresy ban imposed by Emperor Theodosius I as a result of the Council of Constantinople (381), which also banned the "homoeists" . This resulted in violent and protracted conflicts between the new Germanic upper class and the resident population in the newly emerging Germanic empires on Roman soil.

Bible translation

Wulfila's outstanding achievement is the translation of the Bible or large parts of it into Gothic and the development of a Gothic script . In Philostorgios and Socrates, Wulfila's translation of the Bible is given independently of one another. Jordanes also mentions the emergence of a Gothic script. Wulfila's pupil Auxentius, on the other hand, reports nothing of a Gothic script or translation of the Bible. His main concern was to present Wulfila to the Latin clergy as a witness to the truth of the homeic creed .

The Bible was translated into Gothic as a liturgy book , and its translation is in a broader context. The ancient sources do not formulate it directly, but this connection must be assumed: This translation of the Bible must have been accompanied by the formation of a Gothic liturgy. From this liturgy, for example, still bears witness in an anti-Arian treatise from the Vandal handed the 5th century prayer formula Fröja poor (bibelgotisch Frauja armai , "Lord have mercy").

This also included setting up a school to train clergymen for work in the Gothic church. With the development of a Gothic church language and the theological commitment to the homeic creed, Wulfila founded a Gothic 'homeerianism' in the Origenistic traditions of late antique Christianity. His community of goths, located on (eastern) Roman soil, was the nucleus of this development of late antique churchism. The expansion of the homoic church of the Goths began when, after 369 Fritigern, a ruler of a part of the Terwingen with his group turned to Christianity and Emperor Valens then launched a mission in which Christians from the Wilhelminian community very likely also worked.

alphabet

The Gothic script developed by Wulfila was a modification of the Greek script with some Latin letters and runes . Wulfila gave the Goths not only a new script, but also new words ( neologisms , loan formations ), since many terms of the Greek language did not exist in Gothic. Such word creations were one of the earliest forms of contextualized mission , i.e. the attempt to transfer Christian concepts, as they were given in particular by the biblical scriptures, into cultures to which such things must be alien.

Wulfila's linguistic achievements can be seen in connection with his most important work: The so-called Wulfilabibel is the earliest translation of the Bible into a Germanic language. It is preserved as a copy in the so-called Codex Argenteus , a northern Italian manuscript from the 6th century, which is written partly in silver, partly in gold letters on parchment soaked in the imperial purple color . The priceless codex has been kept in Uppsala since 1648 .

Here the atta unsar (“our father”) to get an idea of the language of Wulfila. Wulfila's translations of Christian literature should form the style for the following texts in Germanic languages:

atta unsar þu ïn himinam
christmas namo þein
qimai þiudinassus þone
wairþai wilja þeins
swe ïn himina jah ana airþai
hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif us himma daga
jah aflet us þatei skulans sijaima
swaswe jah knows afletam þaim skulam unsaraim
jah ni briggais uns ïn fraistubnjai
ak lausei us af þamma ubilin
below þeina ïst þiudangardi
jah mahts jah wulþus ïn aiwins
Amen

The "Our Father" ( Mt 6,9-13  EU ) can be found in the Codex Argenteus on the pages Ms4verso (first line) and Ms5recto (remainder). The figure above reproduces a passage ( Mk 3, 26–32  EU ), page Ms16verso.

Remembrance day

The Protestant Church celebrates its feast day on August 26th .

A memorial plaque for him is in the Walhalla in Donaustauf . Furthermore, the Wulfila Glacier on Greenwich Island in Antarctica has been named after him since 2005 .

Remarks

  1. ^ Ernst Albrecht Ebbinghaus : Ulfila (s) or Wulfila. In: Historical linguistic research. Volume 104, 1991, pp. 236-238.
  2. ↑ Cf. Knut Schäferdiek : The tradition of the name Ulfila. In: Knut Schäferdiek: Schwellenzeit. Contributions to the history of Christianity in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. De Gruyter, Berlin 1996, pp. 41-50.
  3. ↑ Cf. Otto Fiebiger , Ludwig Schmidt (Hrsg.): Collection of inscriptions for the history of the East Germans. No. 169. 1917.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Cf. Knut Schäferdiek:  Wulfila. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 34, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-018389-4 , pp. 318–321. ( available for a fee via GAO , De Gruyter Online)
  5. ^ Auxentius of Dorostorum : De vita et obitu Ulfilae. In: Roger Gryson (ed.): Scripta Arriana Latina . Pars 1: Collectio Veronensis. Scholia in concilium Aquileiense. Fragmenta in Lucam rescripta. Fragmenta theologica rescripta. Brepols, Turnhout 1982 (= Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 87), pp. 160-166 (=  Dissertatio Maximini 23-41); Eike Faber: From Ulfila to Rekkared. The Goths and their Christianity . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, p. 78 f .; Uta Heil: Avitus von Vienne and the homeic church of the Burgundians. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2011, p. 123.
  6. ^ Philostorgios: Church history. Edited, translated and commented by Bruno Bleckmann , Markus Stein . Volume 2: Commentary (= small and fragmentary historians of late antiquity . Module E 7). Schöningh, Paderborn 2015, p. 115 ff.
  7. ↑ Cf. Günther Christian Hansen (Ed.): Sokrates . Church history . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002546-8 (critical edition without translation).
  8. ↑ See Günther Christian Hansen (Ed.): Sozomenos. Historia Ecclesiastica - Church history (=  Fontes Christiani 73). 4 volumes. Brepols, Turnhout 2004; see. Stefan Rebenich :  Sozomenus (with Socrates and Theodoret). In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 29, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-018360-9 , pp. 272-277. ( available for a fee via GAO , De Gruyter Online)
  9. ↑ Cf. Theodoret: Church History. Edited by Léon Parmentier. 2nd edition edited by Felix Scheidweiler . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954.
  10. ↑ See Jordanes , Getica In: Theodor Mommsen (ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 5.1: Iordanis Romana et Getica. Berlin 1882 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ); see. Mathias Lawo, Johann Weißensteiner:  Jordanes. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 16, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-016782-4 , pp. 76-80.
  11. ↑ See for example Elfriede Stutz: Gotische Literaturdenkmäler (= Metzler Collection . Volume 48). Metzler, Stuttgart 1966, p. 9 f.
  12. ↑ Eike Faber: From Ulfila to Rekkared. The Goths and their Christianity. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, p. 77.
  13. ↑ Herwig Wolfram : The Goths. From the beginning to the middle of the sixth century. 4th edition. CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 85.
  14. ↑ Eike Faber: From Ulfila to Rekkared. The Goths and their Christianity. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, pp. 79f.
  15. ↑ Eike Faber: From Ulfila to Rekkared. The Goths and their Christianity. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, p. 83f.
  16. ^ Hanns Christof Brennecke , Annette von Stockhausen, Christian Müller, Uta Heil, Angelika Wintjes (eds.): Athanasius works. Third volume, first part: documents on the history of the Arian dispute. 4. Delivery: Up to the Synod of Alexandria 362. De Gruyter, Berlin / Bosten 2014, p. 483 f. 521, 552 f .; Eike Faber: From Ulfila to Rekkared. The Goths and their Christianity. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, p. 82, p. 88 f .; Wolf-Dieter Hauschild , Volker Henning Drecoll : Textbook of Church and Dogma History. Volume 1: Old Church and Middle Ages. 5th, completely revised new edition. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2016, p. 92.
  17. ↑ Herwig Wolfram: The Goths. From the beginning to the middle of the sixth century. 4th edition. CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 94.
  18. ↑ Jan Rohls : God, Trinity and Spirit (= history of ideas of Christianity. Volume 3.1). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014, p. 126 f.
  19. ↑ Knut Schäferdiek: The supposed Arianism of the Ulfila Bible. How to deal with a stereotype. In: Journal of Ancient Christianity. Volume 6, Issue 2, 2002, pp. 320-329.
  20. ↑ Knut Schäferdiek:  Wulfila . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 36, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2004, ISBN 3-11-017842-7 , pp. 374–378. ( Retrieved for a fee from TRE , De Gruyter Online), pp. 374–378, here p. 377.
  21. ↑ Hanns Christof Brennecke : Augustin and the 'Arianism'. In: Therese Fuhrer (ed.): The Christian-philosophical discourses of late antiquity. Texts, people, institutions. Steiner, Stuttgart 2008, p. 178f.
  22. ↑ See Heinrich Beck (philologist) :  Bible. §2 Gothic. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 2, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1976, ISBN 3-11-006740-4 , pp. 488-489 .; see. Piergiuseppe Scardigli , Knut Schäferdiek:  Gothic literature. §1 Gothic Bible. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 12, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998, ISBN 3-11-016227-X , pp. 445-449.
  23. ↑ See Piergiuseppe Scardigli :  Gothic script. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 12, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998, ISBN 3-11-016227-X , pp. 455–458.
  24. ↑ Knut Schäferdiek:  Wulfila . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 36, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2004, ISBN 3-11-017842-7 , pp. 374–378. here p. 375.
  25. ↑ See Heinrich Tiefenbach : Das Wandalische Domine miserere. In: Historical linguistic research. Volume 104, 1991, pp. 251-268.
  26. ↑ Knut Schäferdiek: The supposed Arianism of the Ulfila Bible. How to deal with a stereotype. In: Journal of Ancient Christianity. Volume 6, Issue 2, 2002, pp. 320-329.

swell

  • Auxentius of Dorostorum : De vita et obitu Ulfilae. In: Roger Gryson (ed.): Scripta Arriana Latina. Pars 1: Collectio Veronensis. Scholia in concilium Aquileiense. Fragmenta in Lucam rescripta. Fragmenta theologica rescripta . Brepols, Turnhout 1982 (= Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 87), pp. 160-166 (=  Dissertatio Maximini 23-41).
  • Roger Gryson (Ed.): Scolies ariennes sur le concile d'Aquilée. Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1980, pp. 236-251 (= Dissertatio Maximini 42-63).
  • Bruno Bleckmann , Markus Stein (ed.): Philostorgios: Church history. Volume 1: Introduction, Text and Translation; Volume 2: Commentary (= small and fragmentary historians of late antiquity . Module E 7). Schöningh, Paderborn 2015.

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Wulfila
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ulfilas (Latin)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bishop of the Terwingen (Visigoths, Visigoths )
DATE OF BIRTH at 311
DATE OF DEATH 383
Place of death Constantinople