Project Wulfila

Nunc igitur ad alteram linguam, quae Gotica doctissimi cujusque apud Colonienses iudicio habetur, veniamus [...]

Goropius Becanus, Origines Antwerpianae, 1569.

Project Wulfila is a small digital library dedicated to the study of the Gothic language and Old Germanic languages in general. Our primary goal is to provide linguistically annotated editions, available for download in TEI format or for online browsing, linked to a digital glossary, POS tags, and interlinear translations. The focus is on the Gothic Bible and minor fragments. We are also working on a lemmatized edition of the Old Saxon Heliand and – on a smaller scale – selected Middle and Early Modern Dutch texts. In addition, we aim to prepare digital facsimile editions of relevant textbooks and other public domain resources. From 1999 to 2025, the project was hosted by the University of Antwerp. It is currently being transferred to a new host institution.

Incidentally, the first-ever publication of Gothic Bible fragments took place in the city of Antwerp. In 1569, Ioannes Goropius Becanus printed samples from the Codex Argenteus (notably the Lord's Prayer and citations from Mark) in his Origines Antwerpianae. His (mostly erroneous or biased) attempts to identify and interpret the language sparked the interest of other scholars and may be considered the beginning of Gothic philology (see Van De Velde 1966, pp. 24–35 for a detailed account; von Friesen & Grape 1928, pp. 128–129; Stutz 1966, pp. 83–84).

Notice

The project is moving to a new host. The website was written more than 20 years ago and relied on outdated server-side technology that is no longer viable. The transfer will take some time to complete, as I need to recode pages for client-side technology.

For the moment being, the website is hosted on a temporary server. Most pages are available again, but there may still be glitches. I'm addressing these issues as quickly as possible.

While (much needed) content updates are also planned, the immediate priority is to get everything up and running again.

Thank you for your understanding and sorry for the inconvenience.

Tom De Herdt – June 19, 2025

News

2025-06-19

The search engine is back online! It was completely rewritten so it runs in the browser, not on the server.

2025-05-25

Most of the site has been converted to HTML5 and client-side technology. Broken links are fixed. Display settings are available again and now include an option to render text in the Gothic alphabet.

2025-04-06

University of Antwerp no longer hosts the project. Some features are temporarily unavailable as we transition from server-side to client-side technology.

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