The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#5151
Henry Alford
1810 - 1871 (61 years)
Henry Alford was an English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer. Life Alford was born in London, of a Somerset family, which had given five consecutive generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford's early years were passed with his widowed father, who was curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was a precocious boy, and before he was ten had written several Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic outlines. After a peripatetic school education he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1827 as a scholar. In 1832 he was 3...
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Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec
1501 - 1584 (83 years)
Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec, also known as Hieronymus Bolsec was a French Carmelite theologian and physician, who became a Protestant and controversialist, later returning to the Catholic Church. Life A sermon which he preached at Paris aroused misgivings in Catholic circles regarding the soundness of his ideas, and Bolsec left Paris. Having separated from the Catholic Church around 1545, he took refuge at the Court of Renée, duchess of Ferrara, who was favourably disposed towards persons holding Protestant views. Here he married, and began the study of medicine around 1550, settling as a physician ...
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Siger of Brabant
1235 - 1284 (49 years)
Siger of Brabant was a 13th-century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism. Life Early life Little is known about many of the details of his life. In 1266, he was attached to the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris at the time when a riot erupted between the French and Picard "nations" of students—a series of loosely organized fraternities. The papal legate threatened Siger with execution as the ringleader of the Picard attack on the French, but no further action was taken.
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Cuthbert
635 - 687 (52 years)
Cuthbert of Lindisfarne was an Anglo-Saxon saint of the early Northumbrian church in the Celtic tradition. He was a monk, bishop and hermit, associated with the monasteries of Melrose and Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of Northumbria, today in north-eastern England and south-eastern Scotland. Both during his life and after his death, he became a popular medieval saint of Northern England, with a cult centred on his tomb at Durham Cathedral. Cuthbert is regarded as the patron saint of Northumbria. His feast days are 20 March and 4 September .
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Saint Remigius
437 - 533 (96 years)
Remigius was the Bishop of Reims and "Apostle of the Franks". On 25 December 496, he baptised Clovis I, King of the Franks. The baptism, leading to about 3000 additional converts, was an important event in the Christianization of the Franks. Because of Clovis's efforts, a large number of churches were established in the formerly pagan lands of the Frankish empire, establishing a distinct Catholic variety of Christianity for the first time in Germanic lands, most of whom had been converted to Arian Christianity.
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Franz Joseph Dölger
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Franz Joseph Dölger was a German Catholic theologian and church historian. He studied theology at the University of Würzburg, being ordained into the priesthood in 1902. Afterwards he worked as a chaplain in Amorbach and Würzburg, and in June 1904, obtained his doctorate in theology.
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Orson Hyde
1805 - 1878 (73 years)
Orson Hyde was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement and a member of the first Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He was the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 to 1875 and was a missionary of the LDS Church in the United States, Europe, and the Ottoman Empire.
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Willibald Beyschlag
1823 - 1900 (77 years)
Johann Heinrich Christoph Willibald Beyschlag was a German theologian from Frankfurt am Main. Biography He studied theology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, afterwards serving as an assistant pastor in Koblenz , then as a pastor in Trier . During the following year, Beyschlag began working as a religious instructor in Mainz. In 1856 he became a court preacher in Karlsruhe, and four years later, he was appointed a professor of practical theology and New Testament exegesis at the University of Halle.
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F. C. Grant
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Frederick Clifton Grant was an American New Testament scholar. Grant was born on February 2, 1891, in Beloit, Wisconsin. He received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from General Theological Seminary in 1912 and Master of Sacred Theology and Doctor of Theology degrees from Western Theological Seminary in 1916 and 1922 respectively. Grant was Edward Robertson Professor of Biblical Theology at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In 1951, a Festschrift was published in his honor. The Joy of Study: Papers on New Testament and Related Subjects Presented to Honor Frederick Clifton Grant included contributions from Henry Cadbury, Philip Carrington, and Robert M.
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Seakle Greijdanus
1871 - 1948 (77 years)
Seakle Greijdanus was a Reformed theologian in the Netherlands, who first served in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and later in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands . Greijdanus was born in Arum, Friesland and studied theology at the Free University in Amsterdam, where he specialized in dogmatics.
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Eusebius Amort
1692 - 1775 (83 years)
Eusebius Amort was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Life Amort was born at Bibermuhle, near Tolz, in Upper Bavaria. He studied at Munich, and at an early age joined the Canons Regular at Polling, where, shortly after his ordination in 1717, he taught theology and philosophy. The Parnassus Boicus learned society was based on a plan started in 1720 by three Augustinian fathers: Eusebius Amort, Gelasius Hieber , a famous preacher in the German language and Agnellus Kandler , a genealogist and librarian. The initial plans fell through, but in 1722 they issued the first volume of the Parnassus...
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T. C. Hammond
1877 - 1961 (84 years)
Thomas Chatterton Hammond was an Irish Anglican cleric whose work on reformed theology and Protestant apologetics has been influential among evangelicals, especially in Ireland, Australia and South Africa. He was also Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of New South Wales.
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August Wilhelm Knobel
1807 - 1863 (56 years)
August Wilhelm Karl Knobel was a German Protestant theologian born in Tzschecheln near Sorau, Niederlausitz. From 1826 he studied philosophy, philology and theology at the University of Breslau, earning his doctorate in 1831. Afterwards, he became a lecturer, and later an associate professor at Breslau. In 1838 he became a professor of theology at Breslau, and shortly afterwards relocated to the University of Giessen.
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Johann Wilhelm Friedrich Höfling
1802 - 1853 (51 years)
Johann Wilhelm Friedrich Höfling was a German Lutheran theologian born in Neudrossenfeld, Bavaria. He specialized in the field of liturgical science. He studied philology and theology at Erlangen, and following his theological exam served as a vicar in Würzburg and as a minister in Nuremberg . In 1831 he earned his doctorate in philosophy at Tübingen, and in 1835 received his theological degree. In 1833 he was appointed professor of practical theology at the University of Erlangen. He died in Munich.
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Amalric of Bena
1150 - 1206 (56 years)
Amalric of Bena was a French theologian, philosopher and sect leader, after whom the Amalricians are named. Reformers such as Martin Luther considered him to be a proto-Protestant. Biography Amalric was born in the latter part of the 12th century at Bennes, a village between Ollé and Chauffours in the diocese of Chartres.
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John Goucher
1845 - 1922 (77 years)
John Franklin Goucher was an American Methodist pastor and missionary and the namesake of Goucher College, formerly the Women's College of Baltimore City. He was one of the college's co-founders along with fellow clergyman John B. Van Meter and served as its second president.
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William Hatch
1875 - 1972 (97 years)
William Henry Paine Hatch was an American theologian and New Testament scholar. Early life and education Hatch was born in Camden, New Jersey. He attended Harvard University, graduating in 1898 . Afterward, he graduated the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the General Theological Seminary in New York City. Hatch earned a Doctor of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York and a Doctor of Theology from the University of Strasbourg.
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John Robinson
1919 - 1983 (64 years)
John Arthur Thomas Robinson was an English New Testament scholar, author and the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich. He was a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later Dean of Trinity College until his death in 1983 from cancer. Robinson was considered a major force in New Testament studies and in shaping liberal Christian theology. Along with the Harvard theologian Harvey Cox, he spearheaded the field of secular theology and, like William Barclay, was a believer in universal salvation.
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Stephen Charnock
1628 - 1680 (52 years)
Stephen Charnock , Puritan divine, was an English Puritan Presbyterian clergyman born at the St Katherine Cree parish of London. Life Charnock studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, during which he was converted to the Christian faith, beginning his spiritual journey as a Puritan divine. After leaving the college, he possibly held a position as either a private teacher or tutor, then moving on to become a minister of the faith in Southwark for a short time, converting individuals to Christianity. He continued on to New College, Oxford, where he earned a fellowship and gained a position as se...
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Franz Pieper
1852 - 1931 (79 years)
Franz August Otto Pieper was a Confessional Lutheran theologian who also served as the fourth president of what was known at that time as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States .
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Richard of Saint Victor
1110 - 1173 (63 years)
Richard of Saint Victor was a Medieval Scottish philosopher and theologian and one of the most influential religious thinkers of his time. A canon regular, he was a prominent mystical theologian, and was prior of the famous Augustinian Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris from 1162 until his death in 1173.
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Petrus Hofstede de Groot
1802 - 1886 (84 years)
Petrus Hofstede de Groot , Dutch theologian, was born at Leer in East Friesland, and was educated at the Gymnasium and University of Groningen. For three years he was pastor of the Reformed Church at Ulrum, and then entered upon his lifelong duties as professor of theology at Groningen. With his colleagues Louis Gerlach Pareau, Johan Frederik van Oordt, and Willem Muurling, he edited from 1837 to 1872 the Waarheid in Liefde. In this review and in his numerous books he vigorously upheld the orthodox faith against the Dutch "modern theology" movement. He became professor emeritus in 1872, and d...
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Lucius Ferraris
1687 - 1763 (76 years)
Lucius Ferraris was an Italian Franciscan canonist of the 18th century. He was born at Solero, near Alessandria in Northern Italy. He was also professor, provincial of his order, and consultor of the Holy Office. It would seem he died before 1763.
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Willem Visser 't Hooft
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Willem Adolph Visser 't Hooft was a Dutch theologian who became the first secretary general of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and held this position until his retirement in 1966. Biography Visser 't Hooft was born in Haarlem, in the Netherlands and in his early adult years, was involved in the Dutch student Christian movement and soon became involved internationally. In 1925, while on his first trip to the United States with John R. Mott, he became interested in the "social gospel" movement.
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Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller
1768 - 1835 (67 years)
Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller was a German Orientalist and Protestant theologian. Biography He was the eldest son of the rationalist theologian Johann Georg Rosenmüller. He became identified with the University of Leipzig, first as a student, in 1792 as a tutor, extraordinary professor of Arabic in 1796, and ordinary professor of Oriental languages from 1813 to the time of his death, 1835. He promoted the study of the Arabic language, brought within the reach of theologians the rapidly increasing knowledge of his day with reference to the conditions of the East, and endeavored to raise the...
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Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel
1851 - 1935 (84 years)
Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel was a German theologian and professor of New Testament exegesis born in Zaukeroda near Dresden. He studied theology in Jena, where he had as instructors Otto Pfleiderer and Richard Adelbert Lipsius . In 1879 he received his habilitation, and from 1893 to 1923 was a full professor at the University of Zurich.
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Edward Pococke
1604 - 1691 (87 years)
Edward Pococke was an English Orientalist and biblical scholar. Early life The son of Edward Pococke , vicar of Chieveley in Berkshire, he was brought up at Chieveley and educated from a young age at Lord Williams's School, Thame, Oxfordshire. He matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1619, and later was admitted to Corpus Christi College, Oxford . He was ordained a priest of the Church of England on 20 December 1629.
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John Henry Cardinal Newman
#5179
Wilhelm Heitmüller
1869 - 1926 (57 years)
Wilhelm Heitmüller was a German Protestant theologian, born in Döteberg, presently a division in the town of Seelze. Following completion of theological studies, he attended the minister's seminary at Loccum. In 1902 he received his habilitation at Göttingen, and in 1908 became a professor of New Testament studies at the University of Marburg. Later on, he was appointed professor at the universities of Bonn and Tübingen . He died, aged 56, in Tübingen.
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James Orr
1844 - 1913 (69 years)
James Orr was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and professor of church history and then theology. He was an influential defender of evangelical doctrine and a contributor to The Fundamentals. Biography Orr was born in Glasgow and spent his childhood in Manchester and Leeds. He was orphaned and became an apprentice bookbinder, but went on to enter Glasgow University in 1865. In 1870, he obtained an M.A. in Philosophy of Mind, and after graduating from the theological college of the United Presbyterian Church, he was ordained a minister in Hawick. In 1885 he received a D.D. from Glasgow Univers...
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Cadoc
497 - 580 (83 years)
Saint Cadoc or Cadog was a 5th–6th-century Abbot of Llancarfan, near Cowbridge in Glamorgan, Wales, a monastery famous from the era of the British church as a centre of learning, where Illtud spent the first period of his religious life under Cadoc's tutelage. Cadoc is credited with the establishment of many churches in Cornwall, Brittany, Dyfed and Scotland. He is known as Cattwg Ddoeth, "the Wise", and a large collection of his maxims and moral sayings were included in Volume III of the Myvyrian Archaiology. He is listed in the 2004 edition of the Roman Martyrology under 21 September. His ...
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Cyrillus Jarre
1878 - 1952 (74 years)
Cyrillus Jarre was a Franciscan Archbishop in Jinan, Shandong Province, China and a translator of texts on canon law and Chinese law between Latin and Chinese. Jarre got into conflict with the new communist rulers of China early on. He opposed the formation of state-sanctioned Christian churches in China and supported the Legion of Mary, an association of Catholic laity that was viewed as reactionary organization by the communists. As a consequence, Jarre was arrested by the Chinese authorities on July 25, 1951, and from October 17, 1951, onwards he was imprisoned in Jinan.
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Friedrich August Berthold Nitzsch
1832 - 1898 (66 years)
Friedrich August Berthold Nitzsch was a German theologian. The son of Karl Immanuel Nitzsch, he became professor ordinarius of theology at Gießen in 1868 and at Kiel in 1872. He was the author of Das System des Boethius and Grundriss der christlichen Dogmengeschichte, t. I, Die patristische Periode , amongst other texts.
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Frederic Henry Hedge
1805 - 1890 (85 years)
Frederic Henry Hedge was a New England Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist. He was a founder of the Transcendental Club, originally called Hedge's Club, and active in the development of Transcendentalism, although he distanced himself from the movement as it advanced.
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Heinrich Gottlieb Tzschirner
1778 - 1828 (50 years)
Heinrich Gottlieb Tzschirner was a German Protestant theologian born in Mittweida, Saxony. He studied theology at the University of Leipzig, receiving his habilitation in 1800 with assistance from Dresden examinator Franz Volkmar Reinhard . For a period of time he worked as a private lecturer at the University of Wittenberg, and following his father's death became deacon in his home town of Mittweida. In 1805 he was appointed professor of theology at Wittenberg, later returning to Leipzig , where in 1811 he became rector of the university.
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Helmuth von Glasenapp
1891 - 1963 (72 years)
Otto Max Helmuth von Glasenapp was a German indologist and religious scholar who taught as a professor at the University of Konigsberg in East Prussia and Tübingen . Works Die Lehre vom Karman in der Philosophie der Jainas nach den Karmagranthas. Phil. Diss. , Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1915.Der Hinduismus. Religion und Gesellschaft im heutigen Indien. Kurt Wolff, München 1922.Madhvas Philosophie des Vishnu-Glaubens. Mit einer Einleitung über Madhva und seine Schule. Schroeder, Bonn 1923.Indien. , Georg Müller, München 1925.Der Jainismus. Eine indische Erlösungsreligion. Alf Häger, Berlin 1925.Brahma und Buddha.
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Friedrich Adolph Lampe
1683 - 1729 (46 years)
Friedrich Adolph Lampe was a German Pietist pastor, theologian and professor of dogmatics. He was a Cocceian, and follower of Johannes d'Outrein. He is known as the first Pietist leader from a Calvinist rather than Lutheran background.
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William Stringfellow
1928 - 1985 (57 years)
Frank William Stringfellow was an American lay theologian, lawyer and social activist. He was active mostly during the 1960s and 1970s. Life and career Early life and education Born in Johnston, Rhode Island, on April 26, 1928, he grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Northampton High School in 1945. He managed to obtain several scholarships and entered Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, at the age of fifteen. He later earned a scholarship to the London School of Economics and served in the US 2nd Armored Division. Stringfellow then attended Harvard Law School. After hi...
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Hermann Kutter
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Hermann Kutter was a Swiss Protestant theologian. Together with Leonhard Ragaz, he was one of the founders of Christian socialism in Switzerland. He was heavily influenced by Christoph Blumhardt. He combined Blumhardt's expectation of a coming Kingdom of God with a belief in socialist progress. He saw social democracy as a "tool" of the living God, and its followers as unwitting servants of God. He authored 11 books.
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Otto Weber
1902 - 1966 (64 years)
Otto Weber was a German theologian. Biography Weber was born in Mülheim, and studied at Bonn and Tübingen. In 1933, he joined the Nazi Party and was for a short time a member of the German Christians group. In 1934, Weber became professor at the University of Göttingen. He opposed the witness of the Confessing Church, and after the war felt a strong sense of guilt for his involvement with Nazi Germany. His 1955 work, The Foundations of Dogmatics is one of the most influential Reformed theological works of the twentieth century. Jürgen Moltmann describes him as an "expert teacher" and a "compe...
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Dominique Dubarle
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Dominique Dubarle was a French Dominican friar and religious philosopher, a professor at the Saulchoir. He was dean of the faculty of philosophy of the Catholic Institute of Paris from 1967 to 1973 and was an expert at the Second Vatican Council .
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Henry St. George Tucker
1874 - 1959 (85 years)
Henry St. George Tucker was the 19th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Early life and career Tucker's parents were Episcopal priest, and later Bishop of Southern Virginia, Beverley Dandridge Tucker and Anna Maria Washington . Tucker was descended from St. George Tucker of Williamsburg. He was educated at the University of Virginia, graduating with a BA and MA in 1895. His field was mathematics. Thereafter he studied at the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, graduating as a Bachelor of Divinity and subsequently being orda...
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Edmund Gibson
1669 - 1748 (79 years)
Edmund Gibson was a British divine who served as Bishop of Lincoln and Bishop of London, jurist, and antiquary. Early life and career He was born in Bampton, Westmorland. In 1686 he was entered a scholar at Queen's College, Oxford. Shortly after Thomas Tenison's elevation to the see of Canterbury in 1694 Gibson was appointed chaplain and librarian to the archbishop, and in 1703 and 1710 respectively he became rector of Lambeth and archdeacon of Surrey.
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Henrik Nicolai Clausen
1793 - 1877 (84 years)
Henrik Nicolai Clausen was a Danish theologian and national liberal politician. He was a member of the National Constitutional Assembly from 1848 to 1849, of the Folketing from 1849 to 1853 and of the Landsting from 1853 to 1863.
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Hermann Witsius
1636 - 1708 (72 years)
Hermann Witsius was a Dutch theologian. Life He was born at Enkhuizen. He studied at the University of Groningen, Leiden, and Utrecht. He was ordained in the ministry, becoming the pastor of Westwoud in 1656 and afterwards at Wormer, Goes, and Leeuwarden. He became professor of divinity successively at the University of Franeker in 1675 and at the University of Utrecht in 1680. Witsius became Chancellor of Utrecht University in 1686. In 1698 he was appointed to the University of Leiden as the successor of the younger Friedrich Spanheim. He died in Leiden.
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Franz Xaver von Baader
1765 - 1841 (76 years)
Franz von Baader , born Benedikt Franz Xaver Baader, was a German Catholic philosopher, theologian, physician, and mining engineer. Resisting the empiricism of his day, he denounced most Western philosophy since Descartes as trending into atheism and has been considered a revival of the Scholastic school.
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Peter John Olivi
1248 - 1298 (50 years)
Peter John Olivi, also Pierre de Jean Olivi or Petrus Joannis Olivi , was a French Franciscan theologian and philosopher who, although he died professing the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, remained a controversial figure in the arguments surrounding poverty at the beginning of the 14th century. In large part, this was due to his view that the Franciscan vow of poverty also entailed usus pauper . While contemporary Franciscans generally agreed that usus pauper was important to the Franciscan way of life, they disagreed that it was part of their vow of poverty. His support of the rigorous...
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Rudolf Kittel
1853 - 1929 (76 years)
Rudolf Kittel was a German Old Testament scholar. Kittel studied at University of Tübingen . He was a professor of Old Testament studies at the universities of Breslau and Leipzig . In 1917 he was appointed rector at the University of Leipzig.
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Otto Bardenhewer
1851 - 1935 (84 years)
Bertram Otto Bardenhewer was a German Catholic patrologist. His Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur is a standard work, re-issued in 2008. For Bardenhewer, a patrologist was not a literary historian of the Church Fathers, but a historian of dogmatic definitions.
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Heinrich Heppe
1820 - 1879 (59 years)
Heinrich Ludwig Julius Heppe was a German Calvinist theologian and church historian. In 1844 he earned his doctorate from the University of Marburg, where he was a student of Orientalist Hermann Hupfeld . From 1845 he served as a pastor at St. Martin Church in Kassel. In 1850 he became an associate professor of theology at Marburg, where he attained full professorship in 1864.
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