During the time in which the Battle of Adrianople was in full swing, the Gothic people were being converted to Arian Christianity by the half-gothic missionary, Wulfila, who developed a Gothic alphabet to translate the Bible. Before the development of the new Gothic alphabet, Goths wrote their language using their adaptation of the Futhark (Dr. Peterson mentioned this in class) alphabet—but it was considered to be of pagan origin. Wulfila combined the Greek, Latin, and Futhark alphabets to create a new Gothic language.
It is interesting to note that the Gothic written language (or alphabet I guess) was written as a result of the conversion to Christianity. Also, the only surviving documents that are written in Gothic are called the Codex Argenteus, Codex Ambrosianus, and Codex Gissensis, Codex Carolinus, and Codex Vaticanus Latinus, all written scripture.
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| Illustration of the Gothic people. |
One of the reasons for the decline of the Gothic language is when it lost its function as a church language when the Visigoths (Capital One commercial) converted to Catholicism. Religion seems to have played a major role in the adoption and decline of the Gothic language (both written and spoken). Faith and religion tend to influence the majority of what was originally written down. The Christian religion was important to the Gothic people, and that is what they wrote down. Perhaps this is why there is not as much of information on the culture and customs of the Gothic people—as that was not something that they probably felt was important to write down.
This reminds me of an aspect of the LDS church that is embraced—record keeping through journaling. In my own journaling—I write down what is important to me—such as significant events (graduating high school, starting college, patriarchal blessing, etc…) but do I record things, even seemingly mundane things that could be a benefit to those who follow me? Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what our great-great-great grandparents did for fun? Or to learn about how different their education was from ours? Or how they first met their spouse? I think it would be very insightful. Written language/knowledge is the ultimate preservation of knowledge—however inconvenient to accomplish—it is the way in which we are able to recreate past events through words.
I thought your point about the things we write down is interesting. I know that when I go back and read my journals from when I was a child, a lot of the things that were important to me then aren't really now, and some things that I just threw in on the side are actually really interesting. I think it is really hard to know what people in the future will want to know about us. I wonder how much the Gothic people even thought about leaving something behind for posterity.
ReplyDeleteI also liked what you said about the Gothic written language coming about mostly because of religion. This is just about exactly like it was for the Slavs, who I am studying. I'll probably talk a little more about that in my own post.