09-19-2012, 07:23 PM
In their eyes, they would be traditional Christians, and they would probably regard the other side as 'Athanasian heretics,' just as the other side regarded them as 'Arian heretics.' And they probably wouldn't trace their own side to Arius.
Didn't Wulfila adapt the Greek alphabet to the Gothic language because the runic futhark had pagan connotations? Don't the martyrologies record people being killed for going to church or for refusing to eat sacrificed meat? At least a minority took it seriously. Weren't the earliest Gothic communities south of the Danube founded by Christian Goths fleeing persecution, including Wulfila? It might create a sort of founding myth for some later Gothic communities in the Roman Empire.
Didn't Socrates of Constantinople emphasize the persecutions and the division between Christian Goths, including Fritigern, and pagan Goths, including Athanaric, in his history of the Gothic refugee crisis and revolt? [Halsall tries to argue that this, and not a conflict with the Huns, was the main cause of the crisis] Didn't Salvian consider the Vesi more Christian than the Romans?
Isn't the first known Christian church in Nicopolis in the Gothic ghetto on the south side of the ancient city? [Now it may be that the Danubian borders were more pagan or less Christian than the rest of the Empire, particularly less Christian than Syria or parts of Aegyptus. But that leaves me wondering whether it makes more sense to compare the Goths to others on the Danubian borders, or to others in the Seven Provinces and Italia.]
Now the Alans might be Aryans [Indo-Iranian speakers] - Alanic and modern Ossetian being Iranian languages, and their name going back to the same root - and some of the Goths might also be Alans, but the rest of the Goths wouldn't be Aryans.
Didn't Wulfila adapt the Greek alphabet to the Gothic language because the runic futhark had pagan connotations? Don't the martyrologies record people being killed for going to church or for refusing to eat sacrificed meat? At least a minority took it seriously. Weren't the earliest Gothic communities south of the Danube founded by Christian Goths fleeing persecution, including Wulfila? It might create a sort of founding myth for some later Gothic communities in the Roman Empire.
Didn't Socrates of Constantinople emphasize the persecutions and the division between Christian Goths, including Fritigern, and pagan Goths, including Athanaric, in his history of the Gothic refugee crisis and revolt? [Halsall tries to argue that this, and not a conflict with the Huns, was the main cause of the crisis] Didn't Salvian consider the Vesi more Christian than the Romans?
Isn't the first known Christian church in Nicopolis in the Gothic ghetto on the south side of the ancient city? [Now it may be that the Danubian borders were more pagan or less Christian than the rest of the Empire, particularly less Christian than Syria or parts of Aegyptus. But that leaves me wondering whether it makes more sense to compare the Goths to others on the Danubian borders, or to others in the Seven Provinces and Italia.]
Now the Alans might be Aryans [Indo-Iranian speakers] - Alanic and modern Ossetian being Iranian languages, and their name going back to the same root - and some of the Goths might also be Alans, but the rest of the Goths wouldn't be Aryans.
