The initial success experienced by the Goths encouraged them to engage in a series of raiding campaigns at the close of the third century—many of which resulted in having numerous captives sent back to Gothic settlements north of the Danube and the Black Sea.
One Ulfilas, believed to have descended from a female Christian grandparent taken captive by the Goths in Sadagolthina in Cappadocia, had been displaced and settled north of the Danube River.
He had supposedly been sent on an embassy to the Roman emperor in 341, at the age of thirty, and been consecrated bishop of the Gothic Christians by Eusebius of Nicomedia, bishop of Constantinople, a leading figure of a faction of Christological thought that became known as Arianism, named after his friend and fellow student, Arius of Alexandria.
Arians follow heretical doctrine that the Son was neither equal with God the Father nor eternal).
By the time of his consecration, Ulfilas had accepted the homoean formula (i.e., the Trinitarian doctrine affirming that the Son was “like” the Father).
He returns to his people to work as a missionary.
