Ulfilas

Ulfilas (or Wulfila, perhaps meaning "little wolf") (around A.D. 310-383), bishop, missionary, and translator.

A Goth or half-Goth who had spent time inside the Byzantine Empire at a time when Arianism was dominant, was ordained a bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia and returned to his people to work as a missionary. Ulfilas translated the Bible from Greek into the Gothic language. For this he established a Gothic alphabet writing system. Fragments have survived and are known as the Codex Argenteus.

Ulfilas converted many among the Visigoths and Ostrogoths to Arian Christianity, which when they reached the western Mediterranean set them apart from their overwhelmingly Catholic neighbors and subjects.