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,
#5501
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
#5508
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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Jean du Vergier de Hauranne
1581 - 1643 (62 years)
Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, the Abbé of Saint-Cyran, was a French Catholic priest who introduced Jansenism into France. Life Born in the city of Bayonne to a family of Gascon and Basque merchants, Vergier studied with the Jesuits of Agen. At the age of sixteen he was sent to study at the Sorbonne, and then took up theology at the Catholic University of Leuven. There he formed a friendship with Cornelius Jansen and, as the wealthier of the two, became Jansen's patron for a number of years, getting Jansen a job as a tutor in 1606. Two years later, he obtained for Jansen a position teaching at the episcopal college back in Bayonne.
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P. Chenchiah
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Pandipeddi Chenchiah , spelt also as Pandippedi Chenchiah, a first generation indigenous convert to Christianity, was a jurist, South Indian Christian theologian, and radical thinker of Rethinking Christianity in India group for Indianisation of Christianity. He published Rethinking Christianity in India, as an Indian Christian answer to the Hendrik Kraemer's The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World.
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Giovanni Diodati
1576 - 1649 (73 years)
Giovanni Diodati or Deodati was a Genevan-born Italian Calvinist theologian and translator. His translation of the Bible into Italian from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac sources became the reference version used by Italian Protestants.
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Albert Eichhorn
1856 - 1926 (70 years)
Karl Albert August Ludwig Eichhorn was a German Protestant theologian. He was the author of Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament and one of the founders of the history of religions school, an approach that sought to understand all religions, including Christianity and Judaism, as socio-cultural phenomena that developed in comparable ways. His pioneering work on the role of the contemporary needs, beliefs, and culture that shaped the New Testament reports of the Last Supper argued that this early Christian sacramental meal reflected the influence of Near Eastern gnostic ideas.
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Johann Baptista Baltzer
1803 - 1871 (68 years)
Johann Baptista Baltzer was a German Catholic theologian. Biography He was born at Andernach, and studied at the University of Bonn, which he left in 1827. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1829, he received a degree of D.D. from the University of Munich in 1830, and also was made professor of theology at the University of Breslau in that year. He was at first an enthusiastic follower of Georg Hermes in his attempt to reconcile the newer German philosophy with the Roman Catholic teaching, but definitely broke with his school in 1839 and associated himself with the speculations of Ant...
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Francisco Javier Quintanilla
1833 - Present (193 years)
Francisco Javier Quintanilla was a Chilean priest. Born in Rancagua, he did his ecclesiastical studies at the Seminario Conciliar in Santiago. He published two notable religious works, Tradicionalismo and Historia de la Teolojia. He was a member of the Faculty of Theology and Sacred Sciences at the University of Chile.
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Charles Williams
1886 - 1945 (59 years)
Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.
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Erich Schaeder
1861 - 1936 (75 years)
Erich Schaeder was a German Protestant theologian. He studied theology at the universities of Berlin and Greifswald, where in 1891 he qualified as a lecturer. In 1894 he became an associate professor of theology at the University of Königsberg, and later on, served as a full professor at the universities of Kiel and Breslau .
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Julius Guttmann
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
Julius Guttmann , born Yitzchak Guttmann , was a German-born rabbi, Jewish theologian, and philosopher of religion. Biography Julius was born to Jakob Guttmann while Jakob served as Chief Rabbi at Hildesheim during the years 1874 to 1892, when Hildesheim still had a large Jewish population. Jakob himself published papers on a number of philosophical topics. The family moved to Breslau in 1880.
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Peter Joseph Elvenich
1796 - 1886 (90 years)
Peter Joseph Elvenich was a German Catholic theologian and philosopher born in Embken, a village that today is part of Nideggen, North Rhine-Westphalia. He was a principal supporter and defender of Hermesianism, a theological belief system based on the teachings of Georg Hermes .
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John Leland
1754 - 1841 (87 years)
John Leland was an American Baptist minister who preached in Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as an outspoken abolitionist. He was an important figure in the struggle for religious liberty in the United States. Leland also later opposed the rise of missionary societies among Baptists.
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Samuel Miller
1769 - 1850 (81 years)
Samuel Miller was a Presbyterian theologian who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography Samuel Miller was born in Dover, Delaware, on October 31, 1769. His father was the Rev. John Miller . Miller attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1789. He earned his license to preach in 1791, and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him a Doctorate of Divinity degree in 1804. From 1813 to 1849, he served as Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government at Princeton Theological Seminary, and was also integral in founding the institution.
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Pope Anastasius I
340 - 401 (61 years)
Pope Anastasius I was the bishop of Rome from 27 November 399 to his death on 19 December 401. Anastasius was born in Rome, and was the son of Maximus. He succeeded Siricius as Pope and condemned the writings of the Alexandrian theologian Origen shortly after their translation into Latin. He fought against these writings throughout his papacy, and in 400 he called a council to discuss them. The council agreed that Origen was not faithful to the Church.
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Hugh Pope
1869 - 1946 (77 years)
Henry Vincent Pope, better known as Fr. Hugh Pope , was an English Dominican biblical scholar, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome.
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Christoph Daniel Ebeling
1741 - 1817 (76 years)
Christoph Daniel Ebeling was a scholar of Germany who studied the geography and history of North America. Biography Ebeling was born near Hildesheim, Hanover. He studied theology at Göttingen, but devoted himself to geographical studies, and for 33 years taught history and Greek in the Hamburg gymnasium. He was also superintendent of the Hamburg library, and collected about 10,000 maps and nearly 4,000 books relating to America. Ebeling's magnum opus was a Geography and History of North America , forming a continuation of Büsching's General Geography. He received a vote of thanks from the Uni...
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Stevan Dimitrijević
1866 - 1953 (87 years)
Stevan Dimitrijević was a Serbian theologian, historian and pastor to Chetnik freedom-fighter in Ottoman-occupied Old Serbia and Macedonia during the beginning of the 20th century. Biography He graduated from the theology department of the University of Belgrade and the Kiev Theological Academy. Upon his return in 1894 he was a professor in Skopje and Salonica, the rector of the Theology school in Prizren, a full-time professor of the University of Belgrade from 1920 to 1936 and the founder and first dean of the Theological Faculty in Belgrade. His students include bishop Nikolaj Velimirović,...
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Jakub Wujek
1541 - 1597 (56 years)
Jakub Wujek was a Polish Jesuit, religious writer, Doctor of Theology, Vice-Chancellor of the Vilnius Academy and translator of the Bible into Polish. He is well-known for his translation of the Bible into Polish: the Wujek Bible.
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John Eadie
1810 - 1876 (66 years)
John Eadie was a Scottish theologian and biblical critic. Life He was born at Alva in Stirlingshire . Having studied the arts curriculum at the University of Glasgow, he studied for the ministry at the Divinity Hall of the United Secession Church, a dissenting body which, on its union a few years later with the Relief Church, adopted the title the United Presbyterian Church.
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Norbert of Xanten
1080 - 1134 (54 years)
Norbert of Xanten, O. Praem , also known as Norbert Gennep, was a bishop of the Catholic Church, founder of the Premonstratensian order of canons regular, and is venerated as a saint. Norbert was canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582, and his statue appears above the Piazza colonnade of St. Peter's Square in Rome.
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Zygmunt Łoziński
1870 - 1932 (62 years)
Zygmunt Łoziński was a Polish Roman Catholic bishop who served as the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev that later was aggregated to the Diocese of Pinsk. Soviet authorities arrested him on two occasions during his episcopate.
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Zacharias Ursinus
1534 - 1583 (49 years)
Zacharias Ursinus was a sixteenth-century German Reformed theologian and Protestant reformer, born Zacharias Baer in Breslau . He became the leading theologian of the Reformed Protestant movement of the Palatinate, serving both at the University of Heidelberg and the College of Wisdom . He is best known as the principal author and interpreter of the Heidelberg Catechism.
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