Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the Visigoths in southern France until the loss of Visigothic France at the start of the 6th century and in Visigothic Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine. In the latter country at Mangup, ninth-century inscriptions have been found of a prayer in the Gothic alphabet using biblical Gothic orthography. In exterminating Arianism, many texts in Gothic were probably overwritten as palimpsests or collected and burned. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in the Gothic language, is the "Skeireins", a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John.