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Rh penetrated into his dominions, and he had persecuted the converts severely. On the other hand, Frithigern had found it politic to cultivate the friendship of the empire, and therefore to be himself friendly to its religion, the type of which, we must remember, was Arianism, then favoured by the government.

The actual beginnings of Christianity among the Goths cannot be traced. A twofold process was at work leading to the introduction of the gospel to the Teutonic tribes beyond the Danube. In the first place, Christian captives carried off in the Gothic raids of the empire brought their religion with them; and, inasmuch as every genuine Christian is bound to be a missionary, we are not surprised to learn that some of these captives made the gospel known among the heathen people with whom their lot was now cast. In the second place, Goths served in the Roman army and there came under Christian influences, so that those who were converted, when they went back to their own country, would go as Christians ready to spread the new faith among their people. To these influences we must add that of fugitives from persecution in the empire, who took refuge among the more liberal "barbarians."

The earliest Gothic colony within the empire appears to have established itself at Crim—the Crimea—long before the Arian supremacy, to have become Christian of the Catholic type, and to have remained such throughout. There was a bishop of the Goths named Theophilus at the council of Nicæa ( 325). According to Philostorgius, raids as early as the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus had resulted in Christian captives planting the gospel among the Goths; among these captives, he says, were the ancestors of Ulfilas.