09-27-2010, 07:37 AM
Tough question.
According to Jordanes they seem to have been rather excited (some translations even use the word enthusiastic ) about Christianity. If this is the case, I would guess that the vast majority – 80% is a wild guess – were “practicing” Christians to some extent. Also, if this were the case, I would think that those still professing paganism would have been a bit quiet about it.
On the other hand, Jordanes may not be wholly reliable. He isn't a neutral historian. Even if he was reliable, those people newly converted may have been a bit more enthusiastic than they and their children would be a generation later, in 400 AD.
Quote: That [Valens] might have greater confidence in [the Visigoths], they promised to become Christians, if he would give them teachers who spoke their language. (132) When Valens learned this, he gladly and promptly granted what he had himself intended to ask... And since at that time the Emperor Valens, who was infected with the Arian perfidy, had closed all the churches of our party, he sent as preachers to them those who favored his sect. They came and straightway filled a rude and ignorant people with the poison of their heresy. Thus the Emperor Valens made the Visigoths Arians rather than Christians. (133) Moreover, from the love they bore them, they preached the gospel both to the Ostrogoths and to their kinsmen the Gepidae, teaching them to reverence this heresy, and they invited all people of their speech everywhere to attach themselves to this sect.
Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, XXV. 131+
According to Jordanes they seem to have been rather excited (some translations even use the word enthusiastic ) about Christianity. If this is the case, I would guess that the vast majority – 80% is a wild guess – were “practicing” Christians to some extent. Also, if this were the case, I would think that those still professing paganism would have been a bit quiet about it.
On the other hand, Jordanes may not be wholly reliable. He isn't a neutral historian. Even if he was reliable, those people newly converted may have been a bit more enthusiastic than they and their children would be a generation later, in 400 AD.
David J. Cord
www.davidcord.com
www.davidcord.com
