Gothic Christianity refers to the Christian religion of the Goths and sometimes the Gepids, Vandals, and Burgundians, who may have used Wulfila's translation of the Bible into Gothic and shared common doctrines and practices. Gothic Christianity is the earliest instance of the Christianization of a Germanic people, completed more than a century before the baptism of Frankish king Clovis I.
While one might suppose that the "Gothic Churches" of Europe were built by the Goths, this is not the case. Few structures dating to the Gothic era still exist in Europe, and those don't conform to the style of Gothic architecture, which dates to the Twelfth century. The term "Gothic architecture" was originally a derogatory term meaning something like "crude and barbaric" that did not really relate to the historical Goths.
The Gothic tribes were predominantly Christian for more than a century before they sacked Rome in the Fifth century.
The Gothic Christians were followers of a doctrine (Homoianism) associated by their opponents with the priest Arius. The theological differences between this and mainstream Trinitarian Christianity are discussed under Arianism.
After their sack of Rome, the Visigoths moved on to occupy Spain and southern France. Having been driven out of France, the Spanish Goths formally embraced Catholicism at the Third Council of Toledo in 589.
Read more about Gothic Christianity: Church Figures, Political Figures
Famous quotes containing the words gothic and/or christianity:
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)