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,
#5951
Sebastian Hofmeister
1476 - 1533 (57 years)
Sebastian Hofmeister , known in writing as Oeconomus or Oikonomos, was a Swiss monk and religious Reformer who was prominent in early debates of the Reformation. Hofmeister joined the Franciscan order in Schaffhausen before studying for several years in Paris. There he studied Hebrew and the classical languages and received a doctorate in theology in 1519. By 1520, he was sent to Zürich as a lecturer and later in the same year to Constance. It was in Zurich where he first met the Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli, who influenced him a great deal. Hofmeister would begin preaching the Reformation at Lucerne, resulting in his expulsion from that town.
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Domenico Palmieri
1829 - 1909 (80 years)
Domenico Palmieri was an Italian Jesuit scholastic theologian. Life He studied in his native city, where he was ordained priest in 1852. On 6 June 1852, he entered the Society of Jesus, where he completed his studies. He taught in several places, first rhetoric, then philosophy, theology, and the Sacred Scriptures. In these courses, especially during the sixteen years that he was professor in the Roman College, he acquired a reputation as a philosopher.
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Alfred Vaucher
1887 - 1993 (106 years)
Alfred-Felix Vaucher was an Italian theologian, church historian, and bibliographer. He was a pioneer in the history and study of Seventh-day Adventism. Preaching his first sermon at age 14, Vaucher studied at a church in Paris. In 1903, he was engaged by the Adventist church, to which he devoted an active ministry of approximately eighty years.
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Guibert of Nogent
1055 - 1124 (69 years)
Guibert de Nogent was a Benedictine historian, theologian, and author of autobiographical memoirs. Guibert was relatively unknown in his own time, going virtually unmentioned by his contemporaries. He has only recently caught the attention of scholars who have been more interested in his extensive autobiographical memoirs and personality which provide insight into medieval life.
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Salomon van Til
1643 - 1713 (70 years)
Salomon van Til was a theologian of the Dutch Reformed Church and a leading theological thinker of the post-Cocceius era. Background Van Til was born in Weesp, the son of Johannes van Til and his wife Barbara le Grand. He was raised within the Dutch Reformed Church; his father was a pastor and wished for his son to follow in his foot-steps. To this end, he attended the Latin school in Alkmaar and then the University of Utrecht. A minor speech impediment forced him to focus on medicine, rather than theology, for fear that he would be unable to articulate theological concepts. But van Til remai...
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Carl Georg Rogberg
1789 - 1834 (45 years)
Carl Georg Rogberg was a Swedish priest and university teacher. Rogberg matriculated at Uppsala University in 1807 and studied at the faculty of theology where he graduated in 1818. He started to take seminaries to become a vicar at Heliga Trefaldighets congregation in Uppsala in 1823. In 1828 he became a member of the Bible commission, which was working on a new translation of the Bible into Swedish and in 1831 he became professor of pastoral theology in Uppsala.
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Nicolae Colan
1893 - 1967 (74 years)
Nicolae Colan was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian cleric, a metropolitan bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. From a peasant background, Colan completed high school in Brașov, followed by a period of wandering during World War I that saw him in Sibiu, Bucharest, Moldavia, Ukraine and ultimately Bessarabia, where he advocated union with Romania. After the war, he completed university and taught New Testament theology at Sibiu from 1924 to 1936. Entering the clergy in 1934, he soon became bishop at Cluj, remaining there when Northern Transylvania temporarily became Hungarian territory during World War II.
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Friedrich Staphylus
1512 - 1564 (52 years)
Friedrich Staphylus was a German theologian, at first a Protestant and then a Catholic convert. Biography Staphylus was born at Osnabrück. His father, Ludeke Stapellage, was an official of the Bishop of Osnabrück. Left an orphan at an early age, he came under the care of an uncle at Danzig, then went to Lithuania and studied at Cracow, after which he studied theology and philosophy at Padua.
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Lauri Ingman
1868 - 1934 (66 years)
Lars Johannes Ingman was a Finnish theologian, bishop and politician. In 1906 he began to serve as the editor of Vartija, a Christian magazine. From 1916 to 1930 he was the professor of practical theology in the University of Helsinki. He was also a member of the conservative National Coalition Party, where he acted as the speaker of the parliament and a minister in several cabinets, and served as the Prime Minister of Finland twice, in 1918–1919 and 1924–1925. In 1930 he was elected Archbishop of Turku, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.
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Antonín Chráska
1868 - 1953 (85 years)
Antonín Chráska was a Czech Protestant missionary, translator and theologian. Chráska translated the Protestant Bible into Slovene for the first time since the 1584 Dalmatian Bible. Born into a family of weavers, Chráska decided to study theology at the age of 21. In 1897 he married and moved with his wife to Ljubljana, where he learned Slovene and began missionary work.
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Jeremy Collier
1650 - 1726 (76 years)
Jeremy Collier was an English theatre critic, non-juror bishop and theologian. Life Born Jeremiah Collier, in Stow cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, Collier was educated at Caius College, University of Cambridge, receiving the BA and MA . A supporter of James II, he refused, as a nonjuror to take the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II after the Glorious Revolution. Furthering his obvious disapproval of the new monarchs, he publicly absolved two Jacobites who had conspired to assassinate the King and Queen. In 1713 he was consecrated a non-juror bishop by George Hickes and two Scottish b...
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Albin van Hoonacker
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
Albin-Augustin Van Hoonacker was a Roman Catholic theologian, professor at the Faculty of Theology, Catholic University of Leuven, a member of The Royal Academy of Belgium and Knight of the Order of Leopold.
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Orlando Costas
1941 - 1987 (46 years)
Orlando Enrique Costas was a Hispanic Evangelical theologian and missiologist. Biography Costas was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico to Methodist parents, Ventura Enrique Costas and Rosaline Rivera. He moved with his father to the United States, living first in the Bronx and then Bridgeport, CT. He finished his high school years at Bob Jones Academy and studied at the Missionary College of Nyack. Costas returned to Puerto Rico, where he was ordained in the American Baptist Churches of Puerto Rico, pastored a local church, and studied at the Interamerican University. He returned to the United States...
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Alonzo Potter
1800 - 1865 (65 years)
Alonzo Potter was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States who served as the third bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Potter "identified himself with all the best interests of society."
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Friedrich Spanheim the Younger
1632 - 1701 (69 years)
Friedrich Spanheim the Younger was a German Calvinist theologian of conservative views, son of Friedrich Spanheim. Life He was born in Geneva, and studied at the University of Leiden, graduating M.A. in 1648. He joined the faculty of the University of Heidelberg in 1655.
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John Caird
1820 - 1898 (78 years)
John Caird DD LLD was a Scottish theologian. He entered the Church of Scotland, of which he became one of the most eloquent preachers. He served as the Principal of the University of Glasgow from 1873 until 1898.
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Willem Hessels van Est
1542 - 1613 (71 years)
Willem Hessels van Est, Latinized as Estius , was a Dutch Catholic commentator on the Pauline epistles. Biography He was born at Gorcum, County of Holland. He received his early education at home, after which he went to Utrecht, where he studied classics and thence proceeded to Leuven, where he spent about twenty years in the study of philosophy, theology and Holy Scripture. During the last ten years there he was professor of philosophy in one of the colleges. In 1580 he received the degree of Doctor of Theology.
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Gerrit Hendrik Kersten
1882 - 1948 (66 years)
Gerrit Hendrik Kersten was a Dutch Calvinist minister and politician. After briefly working as a primary school teacher Kersten was inducted into his first pastorate in Meliskerke in 1905 without formal theological training. In 1907 Kersten was instrumental in achieving a union of two groups of disparate, low-church groups of small secessional congregations, resulting in the formation of the Reformed Congregations . Eleven years later, in 1918, he established the Reformed Political Party to realize his vision of "a Calvinist Netherlands ruled on a biblical basis without cinema, sports, vaccination and social security".
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Rudolf Handmann
1862 - 1940 (78 years)
J. J. Rudolf Handmann was a Swiss pastor, professor, theologian and biblical scholar. He was a student of Adolf von Harnack. He was pastor of , part of the Basel Münster congregation, from 1890 to his retirement on 5 May 1935.
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Melchior Teschner
1584 - 1635 (51 years)
Melchior Teschner was a German cantor, composer and theologian. Born in Wschowa in Poland, Teschner attended the Gymnasium in Zittau, Saxony, and studied under Johann Klee. In 1602 he began studies in music theory, philosophy and theology with Bartholomäus Gesius at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder
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Al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar
935 - 1025 (90 years)
Abu al-Hasan ʿAbd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad ibn Khalil ibn ʿAbdallah al-Hamadani al-Asadabadi was an Islamic jurist and hadith scholar who is remembered as the Qadi al-Qudat of the Buyid dynasty and the last great scholar of the Mu'tazilite school of Islamic theology, and a reported follower of the Shafi‘i school. Abd al-Jabbar means "Servant of al-Jabbar ."
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Gilbert Gerard
1760 - 1815 (55 years)
Gilbert Gerard was a Scottish theological writer. He became the minister of the Scots Church, Amsterdam. He was professor of Greek at King's College, Aberdeen, 1791, and divinity, 1795. In 1803 he was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
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Albert Frick
1714 - 1776 (62 years)
Albert Frick was a German theologian. He was born at Ulm on 18 September 1714 and died on 30 May 1776. He studied at Leipsic, and was appointed assessor to the faculty of theology. In 1743 he became a minister at Jungingen, but, returning to Ulm in 1744, filled the post of librarian and professor of morals. In 1751 he went to Munster as a preacher; and in 1768 was named head librarian. Among his writings are Historia traditionum ex monumentis Ecclesiae Christianae : — De Natura et Constitutione Theologie Catecheticae . — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, 18:871.
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Joseph R. N. Maxwell
1899 - 1971 (72 years)
Joseph Raymond Nonnatus Maxwell, SJ was an American Catholic priest, academic, poet, and college administrator. A Jesuit since 1919, he served as President of the College of the Holy Cross from 1939 to 1945, and President of Boston College from 1951 to 1958.
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Thomas Netter
1372 - 1430 (58 years)
Thomas Netter, OCarm was an English Scholastic theologian and controversialist. From his birthplace he is commonly called Thomas of Walden, or Thomas Waldensis. Life Born at Saffron Walden, Essex, as a young adult he entered the Carmelite Order in London, and pursued his studies partly there and partly at Oxford, where he took degrees, and spent a number of years in teaching, as may be gathered from the titles of his writings , which embrace the whole of philosophy, Scripture, canon law, and theology, that is, a complete academical course. He was well read in the classics and the ecclesiasti...
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Renn Hampden
1793 - 1868 (75 years)
Renn Dickson Hampden was an English Anglican clergyman. His liberal tendencies led to conflict with traditionalist clergy in general and the supporters of Tractarianism during the years he taught in Oxford which coincided with a period of rapid social change and heightened political tensions.
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Otto Ritschl
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
Otto Karl Albrecht Ritschl was a German theologian, the son of Albrecht Ritschl. After studying at Göttingen, Bonn and Giessen, he became professor at Kiel in 1889 and afterwards at Bonn . He published, among other works, Schleiermachers Stellung zum Christentum in seinen Reden über die Religion , and a Life of his father .
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Francesco Silvestri
1474 - 1528 (54 years)
Francesco Silvestri, O.P. was an Italian Dominican theologian. He wrote a notable commentary on Thomas of Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles, and served as Master General of his order from 1525 until his death.
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Willem Christiaan van Manen
1842 - 1905 (63 years)
Willem Christiaan van Manen was a Dutch theologian. He was professor in early Christian literature and New Testament exegesis at Leiden University and belonged to the Dutch school of Radical Criticism.
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Balthasar Cellarius
1614 - 1689 (75 years)
Balthasar Cellarius as a German Lutheran theologian and preacher. He wrote prolifically. In 1642 he moved to the University of Helmstedt where became a professor in New Testament studies. Life The son of a rural pastor, Balthasar Cellarius was born in Rottleben, a village in the hills west of Leipzig and north of Erfurt. He grew up in modest circumstances, obtaining his schooling atfrom the Gymnasium in Gera. In 1632 he moved on to Jena where he studied Theology, emerging in 1638 with a Magister degree. Between 1637 and 1641 he supported himself as a teacher and author. He spent a...
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Robert Bolton
1572 - 1631 (59 years)
Robert Bolton was an English clergyman and academic, noted as a preacher. Life He was born on Whit Sunday in Blackburn, Lancashire, the sixth son of Adam Bolton of Backhouse. He attended what is now Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, where his father was a founding governor, and was described as 'the best scholler in the schoole'. At age 18, he was admitted in 1592 to Lincoln College, Oxford, where John Randall was. He was a gifted student, but the next year his father's death caused him financial problems. Richard Brett supported him. He transferred to Brasenose College where there was a Lancashire fellowship available, and proceeded B.A.
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Johan Kõpp
1874 - 1970 (96 years)
Johan Kõpp was an Estonian bishop and head of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church 1939–1944. Biography Kõpp went to high school at the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in Tartu and then studied theology at the University of Tartu. He graduated from university in 1906. After his studies he initially worked as a high school teacher in Pärnu but from 1909 to 1922 was pastor in Laiuse. Already in 1916 he had however taken up a teaching position at the University of Tartu as one of the first ethnic Estonians to do so after the Estonian Declaration of Independence. From 1920 to 1927 he was deputy rector of the university, and from 1928 to 1937 rector.
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William Richard Williams
1896 - 1962 (66 years)
William Richard Williams was the Principal of the United Theological College, Aberystwyth from 1949 to 1962, the first Secretary of the Council of Churches of Wales, and later its president. Biography Born at Pwllheli in Gwynedd to Richard and Catherine Williams, Williams moved to Aberystwyth with his mother on the death of his father in 1912 after winning a scholarship to University College, Aberystwyth, where he graduated in Greek and Philosophy. He served in the British Army during World War I, after which he studied at Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating with a first class BA degree in Theology.
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Eliphalet Nott
1773 - 1866 (93 years)
Eliphalet Nott , was a famed Presbyterian minister, inventor, educational pioneer, and long-term president of Union College, Schenectady, New York. Early life Nott was born at Ashford, Connecticut, on June 25, 1773. He was the second son, and youngest of nine children, born to Stephen Nott and Deborah Nott.
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George Crolly
1813 - 1878 (65 years)
George Crolly was an Irish priest and theologian. George Crolly was born in Lough Faughan, Ballyrolly, Downpatrick, County Down, Ireland, on 11 February 1813. He entered Maynooth College in August 1829 to study for the priesthood. A fellow student at the time was his friend and fellow theologian Rev. Dr. Patrick Murray.
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Nikolaus Selnecker
1530 - 1592 (62 years)
Nikolaus Selnecker was a German musician, theologian and Protestant reformer. He is now known mainly as a hymn writer. He is also known as one of the principal authors of the Formula of Concord along with Jakob Andreä and Martin Chemnitz.
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William Robertson
William Robertson was a Scottish Hebraist. He was educated at Edinburgh University, taught Hebrew in London from 1653–1680, then in 1680 was appointed lecturer in Hebrew at Cambridge University. Life A graduate of Edinburgh, he is identified by Edgar Cardew Marchant in the Dictionary of National Biography as probably the William Robertson who was laureated by Duncan Forester in April 1645. From 1653 to 1680 he lived in the City of London and taught Hebrew. In 1680 he was appointed university teacher of Hebrew at Cambridge at a salary of £20 a year.
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William Kay
1820 - 1886 (66 years)
William Kay was an English cleric and academic, known as a college head and biblical scholar. Life The youngest of nine children of Thomas and Ann Kay of Knaresborough, he was born on the 8th of April 1820, at Pickering, North Yorkshire. He passed two years at Giggleswick school, and, together with James Fraser, gained an open scholarship at Lincoln College, Oxford, March 15, 1836. He graduated in 1839 with a first class in classics and a second in mathematics. He was elected as a fellow of his college 22 October 1840, and in 1842 and was appointed one of the tutors, proceeded M.A., and was e...
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John H. Vincent
1832 - 1920 (88 years)
John Heyl Vincent was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was born at Tuscaloosa, Ala., and was educated at Lewisburg Academy and at Wesleyan Institute, Newark, N. J. He entered the New Jersey Conference in 1853, and was transferred to the Rock River Conference in 1857. He was pastor of churches in Chicago and established the Northwest Sunday-School Quarterly and the Sunday-School Teacher . He was the corresponding secretary of the Sunday-school Union of his denomination and editor of its publications . In 1888, he was elected Bishop and was appointed Resident Bish...
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Derrick Sherwin Bailey
1910 - 1984 (74 years)
Derrick Sherwin Bailey was an English Christian theologian, born at Alcester in Warwickshire, whose 1955 work Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition paved the way for the production of the 1957 Wolfenden report and for the Parliament of the United Kingdom's decriminalization of homosexuality in England and Wales a decade later.
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James MacCaffrey
1875 - 1935 (60 years)
Monsignor James MacCaffrey STL, PhD was an Irish priest, theologian and historian. Biography Monsignor MacCaffrey was born in 1875, at Fivemiletown, Co. Tyrone, he was the son of Francis MacCaffrey of Alderwood, Clogher, Co. Tyrone. He was educated at St. Macartan's Seminary, Monaghan, before going to St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, and was ordained there in 1899.
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Angelo Carletti di Chivasso
1411 - 1495 (84 years)
Angelo Carletti di Chivasso was a noted moral theologian of the Order of Friars Minor; born at Chivasso in Piedmont, in 1411; and died at Coni, in Piedmont, in 1495. His name in Latin is usually given as Angelus de Clavasio . This form is preserved in bibliographic usage.
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Astesanus of Asti
Astesanus of Asti was an important Franciscan canon lawyer and theologian, from Asti in Piedmont. His major work is Summa de casibus conscientiae , a confessional work, in manuscript from around 1317 and comprising eight volumes and three indices. Its writing is said to have been at the prompting of Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini.
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Matthias Hiller
1646 - 1725 (79 years)
Matthias Hiller was a German Protestant theologian and Orientalist. Life Matthias Hiller was born at Stuttgart on 15 February 1646, the son of a Württemberg government secretary. He became professor of logic and metaphysics in 1692, and of Oriental languages and theology in 1698. In 1716 he exchanged these offices for the priory of Königsbronn, where he died on 11 February 1725.
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Andrzej Wiszowaty
1608 - 1678 (70 years)
Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr. was a Socinian theologian who worked with Joachim Stegmann on the Racovian Catechism of 1605, and taught at the Racovian Academy of the Polish Brethren. After the expulsion and exile from Rakow in 1639 Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr. is notable as the main mover in the printing of the Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum which was to influence Voltaire and John Locke. He supervised the printing in Amsterdam by Frans Kuyper, first of the works of Johann Crell and then, backnumbered as "Volume 1" the works of his grandfather Fausto Sozzini 1668. He was working on a revised edition of th...
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Jan Niemojewski
1531 - 1618 (87 years)
Janusz Jan Niemojewski was a Polish nobleman, and theologian of the Polish Brethren. Works 1583 – "Odpowiedź na potwarz Wilkowskiego"1583 – "Obrona przeciw niesprawiedliwemu obwinieniu".1584 – "Ukazanie iż kościół rzymski papieski nie jest apostolski..."1611 – Fausto Sozzini, "Scripta theologica seu tractatus breves de diversis materiis", Raków 1611, pp. 94–293.
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Inácio de São Caetano
1718 - 1788 (70 years)
Inácio de São Caetano, OCD , was a Portuguese scholar, theologian, and church leader. He was appointed the first bishop of Penafiel when the diocese was erected by Pope Clement XIV in 1770; when the diocese was suppressed eight years later, he was promoted to Titular Archbishop of Thessalonica.
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Jean de Serres
1540 - 1598 (58 years)
Jean de Serres was a major French historian and an advisor to King Henry IV during the Wars of Religion that marred the French Reformation in the second half of the Sixteenth Century. As a refugee from religious persecution, he was educated in Switzerland and became a Calvinist pastor, humanist, poet, polemicist, and diplomat. His complete translation of Plato appeared in the famous 1578 edition published by Henri Estienne, which is the source of the standard 'Stephanus numbers' still used by scholars to refer to Plato's works. In 1596, de Serres was appointed 'Historian of France' by King Henry IV.
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Robert of Melun
1100 - 1167 (67 years)
Robert of Melun was an English scholastic Christian theologian who taught in France, and later became Bishop of Hereford in England. He studied under Peter Abelard in Paris before teaching there and at Melun, which gave him his surname. His students included John of Salisbury, Roger of Worcester, William of Tyre, and possibly Thomas Becket. Robert was involved in the Council of Reims in 1148, which condemned the teachings of Gilbert de la Porrée. Three of his theological works survive, and show him to have been strictly orthodox.
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