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,
#5201
Robert Leiber
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Robert Leiber, S.J. was a close advisor to Pope Pius XII, a Jesuit priest from Germany, and Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1930 to 1960. Leiber was, according to Pius's biographer Susan Zuccotti, "throughout his entire papacy his private secretary and closest advisor".
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Carl Friedrich Keil
1807 - 1888 (81 years)
Johann Friedrich Karl Keil or Carl Friedrich Keil was a conservative German Lutheran Old Testament commentator. Keil was appointed to the theological faculty of Dorpat in Estonia where he taught Bible, New Testament exegesis, and Oriental languages. In 1859 he was called to serve the Lutheran church in Leipzig. In 1887 he moved to Rödletz, where he died. Keil was a conservative critic who reacted strongly against the scientific biblical criticism of his day. He strongly supported Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He maintained the validity of the historico-critical investigation of the Bible only if it proved the existence of New Testament revelation in the Scriptures.
Go to Profile#5203
Martin Noth
1902 - 1968 (66 years)
Martin Noth was a German scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specialized in the pre-Exilic history of the Hebrews and promoted the hypothesis that the Israelite tribes in the immediate period after the settlement in Canaan were organised as a group of twelve tribes arranged around a central sanctuary on the lines of the later Greek and Italian amphictyonies. With Gerhard von Rad he pioneered the traditional-historical approach to biblical studies, emphasising the role of oral traditions in the formation of the biblical texts.
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Pope Damasus I
305 - 384 (79 years)
Pope Damasus I , known as Damasus of Rome, was the bishop of Rome from October 366 to his death. He presided over the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of sacred scripture. He spoke out against major heresies , thus solidifying the faith of the Catholic Church, and encouraged production of the Vulgate Bible with his support for Jerome. He helped reconcile the relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Antioch, and encouraged the veneration of martyrs.
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Eberhard Nestle
1851 - 1913 (62 years)
Eberhard Nestle was a German biblical scholar, textual critic, orientalist, editor of the Novum Testamentum Graece, and the father of Erwin Nestle. Life Nestle was a son of the upper tribunal procurator Christian Gottlieb Nestle and his wife Sophie Beate Kleinmann. His half-brother from his father's second marriage was classical philologist Wilhelm Nestle.
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William Howard Durham
1873 - 1912 (39 years)
William Howard Durham was an early Pentecostal preacher and theologian, best known for advocating the Finished Work doctrine. Early life and career Durham was born in 1873 in rural Kentucky and joined his family's Baptist church; however, he would only experience conversion later. He joined the Holiness movement and by 1901 founded the North Avenue Full Gospel Mission, a store-front church in Chicago.
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Andreas Karlstadt
1486 - 1541 (55 years)
Andreas Rudolph Bodenstein von Karlstadt , better known as Andreas Karlstadt, Andreas Carlstadt or Karolostadt, in Latin, Carolstadius, or simply as Andreas Bodenstein, was a German Protestant theologian, University of Wittenberg chancellor, a contemporary of Martin Luther and a reformer of the early Reformation.
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Hermann Gunkel
1862 - 1932 (70 years)
Hermann Gunkel , a German Old Testament scholar, founded form criticism. He also became a leading representative of the history of religions school. His major works cover Genesis and the Psalms, and his major interests centered on the oral tradition behind written sources and in folklore.
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Menno Simons
1496 - 1561 (65 years)
Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest from the Friesland region of the Low Countries who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and became an influential Anabaptist religious leader. Simons was a contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and it is from his name that his followers became known as Mennonites.
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Edward John Carnell
1919 - 1967 (48 years)
Edward John Carnell was a prominent Christian theologian and apologist, was an ordained Baptist pastor, and served as President of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He was the author of nine major books, several of which attempted to develop a fresh outlook in Christian apologetics. He also wrote essays that were published in several other books, and was a contributor of articles to periodicals such as The Christian Century and Christianity Today.
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Nachman of Breslov
1772 - 1810 (38 years)
Nachman of Breslov , also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, Reb Nachman Breslover , and Nachman from Uman , was the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement. He was particularly known for his creative parables, which drew on Eastern European folktales to infuse his teaching by creating deeply kabbalistic and yet universally accessible remedies, advices and parabolic stories, through which anyone can project himself into and draw spiritual and practical guidance. He emphasized finding and expressing a person's uniqueness, while steering away from despair in a world he saw as becoming more and more standardized.
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Theodore Beza
1519 - 1605 (86 years)
Theodore Beza was a French Calvinist Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Protestant Reformation. He was a disciple of John Calvin and lived most of his life in Geneva. Beza succeeded Calvin as the spiritual leader of the Republic of Geneva.
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Romano Guardini
1885 - 1968 (83 years)
Romano Guardini was an Italian, naturalized German Catholic priest, philosopher and theologian. Life Romano Michele Antonio Maria Guardini was born in Verona in 1885 and was baptized in the Church of San Nicolò all'Arena. His father Romano Tullo was a poultry wholesaler. Guardini had three younger brothers. The family moved to Mainz when he was one year old and he lived in Germany for the rest of his life. He attended the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium. Guardini wrote that as a young man he was “always anxious and very scrupulous.”
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Adalbert of Prague
956 - 997 (41 years)
Adalbert of Prague , known in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia by his birth name Vojtěch , was a Czech missionary and Christian saint. He was the Bishop of Prague and a missionary to the Hungarians, Poles, and Prussians, who was martyred in his efforts to convert the Baltic Prussians to Christianity. He is said to be the composer of the oldest Czech hymn Hospodine, pomiluj ny and Bogurodzica, the oldest known Polish hymn, but his authorship of them has not been confirmed.
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Johann Eck
1486 - 1543 (57 years)
Johann Maier von Eck , often anglicized as John Eck, was a German Catholic theologian, scholastic, prelate, and a pioneer of the counter-reformation who was among Martin Luther's most important interlocutors and theological opponents.
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William Carey
1761 - 1834 (73 years)
William Carey was an English Christian missionary, Particular Baptist minister, translator, social reformer and cultural anthropologist who founded the Serampore College and the Serampore University, the first degree-awarding university in India.
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Leopold Zunz
1794 - 1886 (92 years)
Leopold Zunz was the founder of academic Judaic Studies , the critical investigation of Jewish literature, hymnology and ritual. Zunz's historical investigations and contemporary writings had an important influence on contemporary Judaism.
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Jean Gerson
1363 - 1429 (66 years)
Jean Charlier de Gerson was a French scholar, educator, reformer, and poet, Chancellor of the University of Paris, a guiding light of the conciliar movement and one of the most prominent theologians at the Council of Constance. He was one of the first thinkers to develop what would later come to be called natural rights theory, and was also one of the first individuals to defend Joan of Arc and proclaim her supernatural vocation as authentic.
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Luis de Molina
1535 - 1600 (65 years)
Luis de Molina was a Spanish Jesuit priest and scholastic, a staunch defender of free will in the controversy over human liberty and God's grace. His theology is known as Molinism. Life From 1551 to 1562, Molina studied law in Salamanca, philosophy in Alcalá de Henares, and theology in Coimbra. After 1563, he became a professor at the University of Coimbra, and afterward taught at the University of Évora, Portugal. From this post he was called, at the end of twenty years, to the chair of moral theology in Madrid, where he died.
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Martin Chemnitz
1522 - 1586 (64 years)
Martin Chemnitz was an eminent second-generation German, Evangelical Lutheran, Christian theologian, and a Protestant reformer, churchman, and confessor. In the Evangelical Lutheran tradition he is known as Alter Martinus, the "Second Martin": Si Martinus non fuisset, Martinus vix stetisset goes a common saying concerning him. He is listed and remembered in the Calendar of Saints and Commemorations in the Liturgical Church Year as a pastor and confessor by both the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.
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C. I. Scofield
1843 - 1921 (78 years)
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was an American theologian, minister, and writer whose best-selling annotated Bible popularized futurism and dispensationalism among fundamentalist Christians. Biography Childhood Cyrus Scofield was born in Clinton Township, Lenawee County, Michigan, the seventh and last child of Elias and Abigail Goodrich Scofield. Elias Scofield's ancestors were of English and Puritan descent, but the family was nominally Episcopalian. Abigail Scofield died three months after Cyrus's birth, and his father twice remarried during Cyrus's minority. Details of his early education are u...
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Theodor Zahn
1838 - 1933 (95 years)
Theodor Zahn or Theodor von Zahn was a German Protestant theologian, a biblical scholar. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times. Career Zahn was born in Moers of the Rhineland, Prussia . After studying at Basel, Erlangen and Berlin, he became professor of theology in the University of Göttingen in 1871. He filled a similar chair at Kiel in 1877, at Erlangen in 1878, at Leipzig in 1888 and in 1892 returned to Erlangen. He was distinguished for his eminent scholarship, especially in connection with the New Testament canon. He stood at the head of the conservative New Testament scholarship of his time.
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Pierre Poiret
1646 - 1719 (73 years)
Pierre Poiret Naudé was a prominent French mystic and Christian philosopher. He was born in Metz and died in Rijnsburg. Life and accomplishments After the early death of his parents, he supported himself by the engraver's trade and the teaching of French, at the same time studying theology, in Basel, Hanau, and, after 1668, Heidelberg. At Basel he was captivated by Descartes' philosophy, which never quite lost its hold on him. He read also Thomas à Kempis and Tauler, but was especially influenced by the writings of the Dutch Mennonite mystic Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt , whose works were pu...
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Howard Thurman
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Howard Washington Thurman was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.
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Eduard Thurneysen
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Eduard Thurneysen was a Swiss Protestant clergyman and theologian, who was an important representative of dialectical theology. Born in Walenstadt on 10 July 1888, he studied theology under Bernhard Duhm and Paul Wernle at the University of Basel, and from 1911 served as an assistant secretary of the Christliche Verein Junger Menschen in Zürich. From 1913 to 1920 he was a pastor in Leutwil, during which time, he came in close contact with Karl Barth, then a minister in nearby Safenwil.
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Franciscus Gomarus
1563 - 1641 (78 years)
Franciscus Gomarus was a Dutch theologian, a strict Calvinist and an opponent of the teaching of Jacobus Arminius , whose theological disputes were addressed at the Synod of Dort . Life Gomarus was born in Bruges. His parents, having embraced the principles of the Reformation, emigrated from Bruges to the Electorate of the Palatinate in 1578, in order to enjoy freedom to profess their new faith, and they sent their son to be educated at Strasbourg under Johann Sturm. He remained there three years, and then went in 1580 to Neustadt, from which the professors of Heidelberg had been driven by the elector-palatine because they were not Lutherans.
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Friedrich Rittelmeyer
1872 - 1938 (66 years)
Friedrich Rittelmeyer was a Lutheran German minister, theologian and the principal founder and first leader of The Christian Community. Rittelmeyer came to prominence in the early 20th century as a leading academic liberal theologian and priest in Germany and wrote several books that advocated a socially engaged "Christianity of deeds" . During the First World War he eventually became one of the most high-profile clergymen in Germany to publicly oppose the war. From the 1910s his thinking was gradually influenced by the philosopher Rudolf Steiner, and in 1922 a group of mainly Lutheran priest...
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Richard Bentley
1662 - 1742 (80 years)
Richard Bentley FRS was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. Considered the "founder of historical philology", Bentley is widely credited with establishing the English school of Hellenism. In 1892, A. E. Housman called Bentley "the greatest scholar that England or perhaps that Europe ever bred".
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Bernardus Johannes Alfrink
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Bernardus Johannes Alfrink was a Dutch Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Utrecht from 1955 to 1975, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1960. Biography Born in Nijkerk, Bernardus Johannes Alfrink was the youngest son of Theodorus Johannes Alfrink and his wife, Elisabeth Catharina Ossenvoort. His mother died in 1901 at the birth of his two younger twin sisters , after which Bernardus was cared for by a childless aunt from neighboring Barneveld for the next three years. The priest who baptized him was Father Johannes Verstege. Alfrink received his first Comm...
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Catherine of Alexandria
287 - 305 (18 years)
Catherine of Alexandria, also spelled Katherine is, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early fourth century at the hands of the emperor Maxentius. According to her hagiography, she was both a princess and a noted scholar who became a Christian around the age of 14, converted hundreds of people to Christianity and was martyred around the age of eighteen. More than 1,100 years after Catherine's martyrdom, Joan of Arc identified her as one of the saints who appeared to and counselled her.
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Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
1627 - 1704 (77 years)
Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet was a French bishop and theologian renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a master French stylist.
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John Lightfoot
1602 - 1675 (73 years)
John Lightfoot was an English churchman, rabbinical scholar, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Life He was born in Stoke-on-Trent, the son of Thomas Lightfoot, vicar of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. He was educated at Morton Green near Congleton, Cheshire, and at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was regarded as the best orator among the undergraduates. After taking his degree he became assistant master at Repton School in Derbyshire; after taking orders, he was appointed curate of "Norton-under-Hales" in Shropshire. There he att...
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Faustina Kowalska
1905 - 1938 (33 years)
Maria Faustyna Kowalska, OLM , also known as Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament, was a Polish Catholic religious sister and mystic. Faustyna, popularly spelled "Faustina", had apparitions of Jesus Christ which inspired the Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy and earned her the title of "Secretary of Divine Mercy".
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Georg Hermes
1775 - 1831 (56 years)
Georg Hermes was a German Roman Catholic theologian who advocated a rational approach to theology. During his lifetime, his theology was greatly in vogue in Germany, but declined after the posthumous papal condemnation of "Hermesianism".
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Pope Nicholas I
820 - 867 (47 years)
Pope Nicholas I , called Nicholas the Great, was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 24 April 858 until his death. He is remembered as a consolidator of papal authority, exerting decisive influence on the historical development of the papacy and its position among the Christian nations of Western Europe. Nicholas I asserted that the pope should have suzerainty over all Christians, even royalty, in matters of faith and morals.
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Vincent de Paul
1581 - 1660 (79 years)
Vincent de Paul, CM , commonly known as Saint Vincent de Paul, was an Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor. In 1622 Vincent was appointed a chaplain to the galleys. After working for some time in Paris among imprisoned galley slaves, he returned to be the superior of what is now known as the Congregation of the Mission, or the "Vincentians" , which he co-founded.
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Al-Shafi'i
767 - 820 (53 years)
Abū ʿAbdillāh Muḥammad ibn Idrīs ash-Shāfiʿī was a Muslim theologian, writer, and scholar, who was one of the first contributors of the principles of Islamic jurisprudence . Often referred to as 'Shaykh al-Islām', al-Shāfi‘ī was one of the four great Sunni Imams, whose legacy on juridical matters and teaching eventually led to the formation of Shafi'i school of fiqh . He was the most prominent student of Imam Malik ibn Anas, and he also served as a judge for a time in Najran. Born in Palestine , he also lived in Mecca and Medina in the Hejaz, Yemen, Baghdad in Iraq, and Egypt.
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Matthew Henry
1662 - 1714 (52 years)
Matthew Henry was a British Nonconformist minister and author who was born in Wales but spent much of his life in England. He is best known for the six-volume biblical commentary Exposition of the Old and New Testaments.
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Francisco de Vitoria
1480 - 1546 (66 years)
Francisco de Vitoria was a Spanish Roman Catholic philosopher, theologian, and jurist of Renaissance Spain. He is the founder of the tradition in philosophy known as the School of Salamanca, noted especially for his concept of just war and international law. He has in the past been described by scholars as the "father of international law", along with Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius, though some contemporary academics have suggested that such a description is anachronistic, since the concept of postmodern international law did not truly develop until much later. American jurist Arthur Nussbaum noted Vitoria's influence on international law as it pertained to the right to trade overseas.
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Vincent of Lérins
500 - 445 (-55 years)
Vincent of Lérins was a Gallic monk and author of early Christian writings. One example was the Commonitorium, c.434, which offers guidance in the orthodox teaching of Christianity. Suspected of semi-Pelagianism, he opposed the Augustinian model of grace and was probably the recipient of Prosper of Aquitaine's Responsiones ad Capitula Objectionum Vincentianarum. His feast day is celebrated on 24 May.
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Edgar J. Goodspeed
1871 - 1962 (91 years)
Edgar Johnson Goodspeed was an American theologian and scholar of Greek and the New Testament, and Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the University of Chicago until his retirement. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago, whose collection of New Testament manuscripts he enriched by his searches. The University's collection is now named in his honor.
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John Keble
1792 - 1866 (74 years)
John Keble was an English Anglican priest and poet who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Keble College, Oxford, was named after him. Early life Keble was born on 25 April 1792 in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where his father, also named John Keble, was vicar of Coln St. Aldwyns. He and his brother Thomas were educated at home by their father until each went to Oxford. In 1806, Keble won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He excelled in his studies and in 1810 achieved double first-class honours in both Latin and mathematics. In 1811, he won the university prizes for both the English and Latin essays and became a fellow of Oriel College.
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Johann Gerhard
1582 - 1637 (55 years)
Johannes Gerhard was a Lutheran church leader and Lutheran Scholastic theologian during the period of Orthodoxy. Biography He was born in the German city of Quedlinburg. During a dangerous illness, at the age of fourteen he came under the personal influence of Johann Arndt, author of Das wahre Christenthum, and resolved to study for the church. He entered the University of Wittenberg in 1599, and studied philosophy and theology. A relative then persuaded him to change his subject, and he studied medicine for two years. In 1603, he resumed his theological reading at Jena, and in the following year received a new impulse from J.W.
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Johann Gottfried Eichhorn
1752 - 1827 (75 years)
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn was a German Protestant theologian of the Enlightenment and an early orientalist. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History. Education and early career Born at Dörrenzimmern , in the Principality of Hohenlohe-Oehringen, Eichhorn was educated at the state school in Weikersheim, where his father was superintendent, at the gymnasium at Heilbronn and at the University of Göttingen , studying under Johann David Michaelis. In 1774 he received the rectorship of the gymnasium at Ohrdruf, in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha.
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Ulfilas
311 - 383 (72 years)
Ulfilas , also spelled Ulphilas and Orphila, all Latinized forms of the unattested Gothic form *𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐌹𐌻𐌰 Wulfila, literally "Little Wolf", was a Goth of Cappadocian Greek descent who served as a bishop and missionary, participated in the Arian controversy, and is credited with the translation of the Bible into Gothic. He developed the Gothic alphabet – inventing a writing system based on the Greek alphabet – in order for the Bible to be translated into the Gothic language. Although the translation of the Bible into the Gothic language has traditionally been ascribed to Ulfilas, analysis ...
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Cotton Mather
1663 - 1728 (65 years)
Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman and author in a colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College, he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, where he preached for the rest of his life.
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Walther Eichrodt
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Walther Eichrodt was a German Old Testament scholar and Protestant theologian. From 1908 to 1914 he studied theology in Bethel, Greifswald and Heidelberg, obtaining his habilitation at the University of Erlangen in 1918. In 1922 he succeeded Albrecht Alt as an associate professor of history of religions and Old Testament studies at the University of Basel, where from 1934 to 1960 he taught classes as a full professor. In 1953 he was named university rector.
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József Mindszenty
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
József Mindszenty was a Hungarian cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Esztergom and leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary from 1945 to 1973. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, for five decades "he personified uncompromising opposition to fascism and communism in Hungary". During World War II, he was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. After the war, he opposed communism and communist persecution in his country. As a result, he was tortured and given a life sentence in a 1949 show trial that generated worldwide condemnation, including a United Nation...
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Peter Canisius
1521 - 1597 (76 years)
Peter Canisius was a Dutch Jesuit priest. He became known for his strong support for the Catholic faith during the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Switzerland and the British Isles. The restoration of the Catholic Church in Germany after the Protestant Reformation is largely attributed to the work there of the Society of Jesus, which he led. He is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint and as a Doctor of the Church.
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Martin Grabmann
1875 - 1949 (74 years)
Martin Grabmann was a German Roman Catholic priest, medievalist and historian of theology and philosophy. He was a pioneer of the history of medieval philosophy and has been called "the greatest Catholic scholar of his time."
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