We now proceed to the conversion of the Continental Teutons, especially those of France and
Germany.
The first wholesale conversions of the Germanic or Teutonic race to the Christian religion
took place among the Goths in the time when Arianism was at the height of power in the East
Roman empire. The chief agents were clerical and other captives of war whom the Goths in their
raids carried with them from the provinces of the Roman empire and whom they learned to admire
and love for their virtue and supposed miraculous power. Constantine the Great entered into friendly
relations with them, and is reported by Eusebius and Socrates to have subjected them to the cross
of Christ. It is certain that some ecclesiastical organization was effected at that time. Theophilus,
a bishop of the Goths, is mentioned among the fathers of the Council of Nicaea, 325.
The real apostle of the Goths is Ulifilas,^97 who was consecrated bishop in 348 at
Constantinople, and died there in 381, aged seventy years. He invented the Gothic alphabet, and
translated the Bible into Gothic, but was an Arian, or rather a semi-Arian, who regarded Christ as
a secondary God and the Holy Spirit merely as a sanctifying power.^98
Arianism spread with great rapidity among the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, and
Vandals. This heretical form of Christianity, however, was more a matter of accident than preference
and conviction among the Germans, and soon gave way to orthodoxy when they became acquainted
with it. When Alaric, the famous king of the Visigoths, captured Rome (410), he treated the city
with marked leniency, which Augustin justly traced to the influence of the Christian faith even in
heretical form. The Vandals, the rudest among the Teutonic tribes, made an exception; they fiercely
persecuted the orthodox Christians in North Africa (since 430) and desolated this once flourishing
field of the Catholic Church, the scene of the immortal labors of St. Augustin. Their kingdom was
destroyed under Justinian (534), but the Catholic Church never rose from its ruins, and the weak
remnant was conquered by the sword of Islâm (670).
Chrysostom made a noble effort to convert the Eastern Goths from Arianism to Catholicity,
but his mission ceased after his death (407).
The conversion of the Franks to Catholic christianity and various political circumstances
led to the abandonment of Arianism among the other Germanic tribes. The Burgundians who spread
from the Rhine to the Rhone and Saone, embraced Catholic Christianity in 517, and were
incorporated into the French kingdom in 534. The Suevi who spread from Eastern Germany into
France and Spain, embraced the Catholic faith in 550. The Visigoths in Spain, through their king,
Reccared the Catholic, subscribed an orthodox creed at the third Council of Toledo, a.d. 589, but
the last of the Gothic kings, Roderic, was conquered by the Saracens, breaking into Spain from
Africa, in the bloody battle of Xeres de la Frontera, a.d. 711.
The last stronghold of Arianism were the Longobards or Lombards, who conquered Northern
Italy (still called Lombardy) and at first persecuted the Catholics. They were converted to the
orthodox faith by the wise influence of Pope Gregory I. (590616), and the Catholic queen
Theodelinde (d. 625) whose husband Agilulf (590–616) remained Arian, but allowed his son
Adelwald to be baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church. An Arian reaction followed, but
(^97) The usual spelling. Better: Wulfila, i.e. Wölflein, Little Wolf.
(^98) In his testamentary creed, which he always held (semper sic credidi), he confesses faith "in God the Father and in his
only begotten Son our Lord and God, and in the Holy Spirit as virtutem illuminantem et sanctificantem nec Deum nec Dominum
sed ministrum Christi." Comp. Krafft, l.c. 328 sqq.