The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#2651
Edmund O'Reilly
1811 - 1878 (67 years)
Edmund James O'Reilly was an Irish Jesuit Catholic theologian. Biography Edmund James O'Reilly was born in London, England, United Kingdom, on 30 April 1811. He was educated at Clongowes and Maynooth and studied theology for seven years in the Roman College in Rome. He then gained the decree of Doctor of Divinity by a "public act" de iniversa theologia.
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James Stewart
1896 - 1990 (94 years)
James Stuart Stewart was a minister of the Church of Scotland. He taught New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh . Educated at the High School of Dundee and the University of St Andrews from 1913, he took a first in classics . His studies were interrupted by service in France with the Royal Engineers . After the war he pursued divinity at New College, Edinburgh, then a United Free Church of Scotland institution, with postgraduate work at the University of Bonn and an assistantship at Barclay Church, Edinburgh. He was minister of North Morningside Parish Church.
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Isaac-Bénédict Prévost
1755 - 1819 (64 years)
Isaac-Bénédict Prévost was a Swiss Protestant theologian and naturalist who was one of the first to identify fungal infection of plants and to find treatments to avoid them. Prévost was born in Geneva to Jean-Jacques Prévost and Marie-Élisabeth Henri. A cousin was the ophthalmologist Pierre Prévost. Little is known of his early life but he chose science to a career in business after apprenticing in a grocery. He became interested in science after reading the work of the astronomer Duc-la-Chapelle. In 1777, he became a private tutor to the sons of Delmas in Montauban. He founded a society for science in Montauban.
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Christian Chemnitz
1615 - 1666 (51 years)
Christian Chemnitz was a German Lutheran theologian. Latin language sources identify him as Christianus Chemnitius. Life Family provenance Christian Chemnitz was born in Königsfeld, a small town in the hills to the south of Leipzig. The family was able to trace its origins back to Pritzwalk in Brandenburg where since 1287 they had provided no fewer than sixteen mayors and chief aldermen. The most notable family member in more recent generations was Christian's great uncle, the theologian and reformer Martin Chemnitz . Christian's father was another Martin Chemnitz , a teacher and theologian in Königsfeld where he had been appointed pastor in 1593.
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Thomas Cuming Hall
1858 - 1936 (78 years)
Thomas Cuming Hall was an American Presbyterian theologian, son of the Rev. John Hall . He was born at Armagh, Ireland and arrived in America in 1867 with his parents when his father took up the post of pastor at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church; he was naturalized on May 8, 1882. He graduated from Princeton University in 1879 and from Union Theological Seminary in 1882, and studied at Berlin and Göttingen 1882–83. Ordained in 1883, he held pastorates at Omaha, Neb. , and Chicago , and in 1898 became professor of Christian ethics at Union Seminary. In 1884 he married German Jennie Elizabeth Louise Bartling in London, England.
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Nils Johan Ekdahl
1799 - 1870 (71 years)
Nils Johan Ekdahl was a Swedish theologian, political writer and cultural historian. Student in Lund in 1820, ordination as pastor in 1822, employed as a preacher in Stockholm in 1825. In his spare time, he devoted himself to historical and archaeological research, and traveled from 1827 to 1830 through the landscape of Norrland in the north of Sweden, about which he reports in his treatise Om vattuminskningen i norra poltrakterna . In his last years of life Ekdahl was also a staunch supporter of the Icelandic theologian Magnús Eiríksson , of whom he translated two books into Swedish.
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Abraham de Sola
1825 - 1882 (57 years)
Abraham de Sola was a Canadian rabbi, author, Orientalist, and academic. Originating from a large renowned family of rabbis and scholars, De Sola was recognized as one of the foremost leaders of Orthodox Judaism in North America during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
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Andreas Fischer
1480 - 1540 (60 years)
Andreas Fischer was an Austrian/Moravian Anabaptist, and associate of Oswald Glaidt. He first appears as an Anabaptist leader in the public records in 1528 in Silesia, as a literary opponent of Caspar Schwenckfeldt's associate, Valentine Crautwald. His main written work is "Scepastes Decologi," in which he defended not only adult baptism but also the reinstitution of Saturday/Sabbath keeping as a Christian practice. This work is lost, but its main arguments are carefully reconstructed by Daniel Liechty based on Crautwald's tract against it Fischer spent the 1530s moving back and forth betw...
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Louis de Dieu
1590 - 1642 (52 years)
Louis de Dieu was a Dutch Protestant minister and a leading orientalist. His grandfather had served at the court of Charles V, and his father, Daniel de Dieu, was also a protestant minister and linguist. Louis was educated at Leiden, where he was regent of the Walloon College . He declined the chair of theology and oriental languages at Utrecht.
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John Harding
1501 - 1610 (109 years)
John Harding was an English churchman and academic. He was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford from 1591 to 1598, and President of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1607. He was also involved in the translation of the Authorized King James Version, becoming leader of the First Oxford Company of translators after the death of John Rainolds.
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John Dickie
1875 - 1942 (67 years)
John Dickie was a Scottish-New Zealand presbyterian theologian and professor. Life He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland on 20 May 1875. After growing up in the Buchan District of North East Scotland, Dickie attended University in Aberdeen in 1891, graduating with an MA in classics. He taught at public schools for two years after graduating, before beginning theological studies at the University of Edinburgh, a decision that was influenced by Professor Flint. He won many scholarships and prizes every year during his studying, and worked as an assistant to many parishes throughout England.
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Franciscus Haraeus
1555 - 1631 (76 years)
Franciscus Haraeus , , was a theologian, historian, and cartographer from the Low Countries. He is best known for his history of the origins of the Dutch Revolt, written from a Catholic perspective but without polemical bias. He was one of the first cartographers to make thematic maps and globes.
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Guitmund
1100 - 1084 (-16 years)
The Norman Guitmund , Bishop of Aversa, was a Benedictine monk who was an opponent of the teachings of Berengar of Tours. In his youth Guitmund entered the monastery of La-Croix-Saint-Leufroy in the Diocese of Évreux. By 1060 he was studying theology at the Abbey of Bec, where he had Lanfranc as teacher and Anselm as a fellow-student, each of them later Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1070 William the Conqueror called him to take up a diocese in England, to which the monk responded with his Oratio ad Guillelmum, denouncing the Norman Conquest.
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Lorenzo Pucci
1458 - 1531 (73 years)
Lorenzo Pucci was an Italian cardinal and bishop from the Florentine Pucci family. His brother Roberto Pucci and his nephew Antonio Pucci also became cardinals. Biography Pucci was born in Florence.
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Pierre Boquin
1518 - 1582 (64 years)
Pierre Boquin was a French Reformed Theologian who played a critical role in the Reformation of the Electoral Palatinate. Origins and early career Pierre Boquin was probably born after 1518 in Guyenne in Western France. He earned a doctorate in theology in 1539 at the University of Bourges. He was briefly a member of the Carmelite Order even serving as prior of the Bourges community before leaving in 1541 due to his turn toward Protestantism. He fled through Basel and Leipzig to Wittenberg. He joined the faculty of the Strasbourg Academy in 1542 as the successor of John Calvin.
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Felino Maria Sandeo
1444 - 1503 (59 years)
Felino Maria Sandeo , often quoted under the Latin name of Felinus, was an Italian canonist of the fifteenth century. Biography He was born at Felino, in the Diocese of Reggio, in 1444. He taught canon law from 1466 to 1474 at Ferrara, which was his family's native place, and at Pisa until 1484, when he became auditor of the Sacred Palace and lived at Rome. On 4 May 1495, he became Bishop of Penne and Atri and on 25 September of the same year Coadjutor Bishop of Lucca with right of succession. He became Bishop of Lucca in 1499.
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George Lokert
1485 - 1547 (62 years)
George Lokert of Ayr was a Scottish philosopher and theologian who made significant contributions to the study of logic. A pupil of John Mair, he also studied and taught at the University of Paris, and eventually served as prior of the Sorbonne. Returning to Scotland in 1521, he served as Rector of the University of St Andrews .
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Jean Le Clerc
1657 - 1736 (79 years)
Jean Le Clerc, also Johannes Clericus , was a Genevan theologian and biblical scholar. He was famous for promoting exegesis, or critical interpretation of the Bible, and was a radical of his age. He parted with Calvinism over his interpretations and left Geneva for that reason.
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Francis Aveling
1875 - 1941 (66 years)
Francis Arthur Powell Aveling MC ComC was a Canadian psychologist and Catholic priest. He married Ethel Dancy of Steyning, Sussex in 1925. Life Francis Aveling was born at St. Catharines, Ontario 25 December 1875. He went to Bishop Ridley College in Ontario and McGill University before studying at Keble College at the University of Oxford, England. Aveling was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Father Luke Rivington in 1896 and entered the Pontificio Collegio Canadese in Rome. There he earned his doctor of divinity degree. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1899, and served as a curate in Tottenham, before becoming first rector of Westminster Cathedral Choir School.
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Antoine-Joseph Mège
1625 - 1691 (66 years)
Antoine-Joseph Mège was a French Benedictine of the Congregation of St. Maur. He is known for his commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict. Life On 17 March 1643, he became a Benedictine at the monastery of Vendôme. In 1659 he taught theology at the Abbey of St. Denis and afterwards devoted himself to preaching.
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Nicolas des Gallars
1520 - 1580 (60 years)
Nicolas des Gallars [in Lat. Gallasius] , was a Calvinist pastor and theologian . Life Gallars was of noble birth, and "possessed legal training, rich exposure to the humanities, and polished Latin." He first appears as author of a Defensio of William Farel, published at Geneva in 1545, followed by translations into French of three tracts by John Calvin. Scott Manetsch notes that Gallars' appointment "signaled an important new stage in Calvin's recruitment efforts." In 1551 Gallars was admitted bourgeois of Geneva, and in 1553 made pastor of the church in Jussy.
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Michael Vehe
1485 - 1539 (54 years)
Michael Vehe was a German monk and theologian. Life Vehe was born in Biberach . He joined the Dominicans in Wimpfen and was sent to Heidelberg in 1506, where he taught in 1512 and received a doctorate in theology in 1513. In 1515 he was appointed regent of the Dominican house of studies at Heidelberg; later Cardinal Albert of Mainz chose him as theologian and put him in charge of the church of Halle, Saxony. He was summoned to Augsburg in 1530 to refute the Lutheran Confession of Faith and took a prominent part in a debate against the Lutherans in 1534 in Leipzig. He was called to the bishopric of Halberstadt on February 21, 1539.
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Juan de Dicastillo
1584 - 1653 (69 years)
Juan de Dicastillo was a Spanish Jesuit theologian. He was born in Naples. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1600, and was professor of theology for twenty-five years at Toledo, Murcia, and Vienna. He died in Ingolstadt.
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Jodh Singh
1882 - 1981 (99 years)
Bhai Jodh Singh was a Sikh theologian, author, mentor and social activist. He played an important role in the Singh Sabha movement. He was a recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan. See also Sikhism
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Richard FitzRalph
1295 - 1360 (65 years)
Richard FitzRalph was a scholastic philosopher, theologian, and Norman Irish Archbishop of Armagh during the 14th century. His thought exerted a significant influence on John Wycliffe's. Life FitzRalph was born into a well-off burgess family of Anglo-Norman/Hiberno-Norman descent in Dundalk, Ireland. He is noted as an ex-fellow and teacher of Balliol College, at the University of Oxford in 1325 . By 1331, he was a Regent master in Theology, and soon after was made Vice-Chancellor of the university; this was an almost unparalleled achievement for someone still in his early thirties, let alone ...
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Conrad of Gelnhausen
1325 - 1390 (65 years)
Conrad of Gelnhausen was a German theologian and canon lawyer, and one of the founders of the conciliar movement of the late fourteenth century. Details of his life are sketchy. He was baccalaureus at the University of Paris in 1344. For the two decades after then he can be tracked by prebends he is known to have had, in various places in Germany. He turned towards the law later in his career.
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Valborg Lerche
1873 - 1931 (58 years)
Valborg Lerche was a Norwegian social worker. She was the first female theologian in Norway. Biography She was born in Sem as a ship-owner Vincent Stoltenberg Lerche, Sr. and Christine Marie Rosenvinge , and a much younger half-sister of Vincent Stoltenberg Lerche. She also had four older sisters.
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Jacques Merlin
Jacques Merlin was a French theologian and book editor, best remembered for his pioneering two volume collection of church councils, the Quatuor concilia generalia printed in 1524. Jacques was born in Saint-Victurnien. He became a doctor of theology at the College of Navarre in 1499. He then taught divinity at Limoges Cathedral.
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Matthieu Cottière
1581 - 1656 (75 years)
Matthieu Cottière was a French Reformed pastor at Tours and theological writer. Life His parents were Simon Cottière or Couttière and Françoise Ribbe. He studied theology at Geneva to 1604, presenting a dissertation on justification. He then moved on to the University of Leiden, and took part in the series of debates on predestination and justification between Arminius and Gomarus.
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Johann Habermann
1516 - 1590 (74 years)
Johann Habermann, also Johannes Avenarius was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born at Eger on 10 August 1516. He went over to the Lutheran Church about 1540, studied theology, and filled a number of pastorates. After a brief academic activity at Jena and Wittenberg, in 1575, he accepted a call as superintendent of Naumburg-Zeitz.
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Sixtus of Siena
1520 - 1569 (49 years)
Sixtus of Siena was a Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism, and became a Roman Catholic theologian. Biography He began his career as a Franciscan preacher, speaking throughout Italy. Though he was convicted to die in Rome for the crime of heresy or recidivism, he was saved by a Dominican inquisitor, the future Pope Pius V, who repealed the condemnation when Sixtus recanted and pledged to transfer to the Dominican Order instead. He is considered one of the two most outstanding Dominican scholars of his generation. He had as a master Lancelotto Politi, some of whose writings he later publicly criticised.
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David Tappan
1752 - 1803 (51 years)
David Tappan was an American theologian. He occupied the Hollis Chair at Harvard Divinity School until his death in 1803. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1796. He graduated from Harvard University in 1771.
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James Wilson
1836 - 1931 (95 years)
James Maurice Wilson was a British priest in the Church of England as well as a theologian, teacher and astronomer. Early life Wilson and his twin brother, Edward Pears Wilson, attended King William's College on the Isle of Man from August 1848 to midsummer 1853 . Their father Edward, vicar of Nocton in Lincolnshire, had earlier been headmaster there. According to his autobiography, Wilson had a rather unhappy time at King William's College. He later studied at Sedbergh School.
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Ibn al-Malahimi
1050 - 1141 (91 years)
Rukn al-dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Malāḥimī al-Khuwārazmī was a Khwārazmian Islamic theologian of the Muʿtazilī and Ḥanafī schools. He wrote six works known by title, but of these only one is completely preserved and two partially; the rest are lost.
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John Preston
1587 - 1628 (41 years)
John Preston was an Anglican minister and master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Upbringing John Preston, the son of Thomas Preston, a farmer, and his wife Alice, daughter of Lawrence Marsh of Northampton, was born at Upper Heyford in the parish of Bugbrook, Northamptonshire. He was baptised at Bugbrook church on 27 October 1587. His father died when he was 13 years old, and his mother's maternal uncle, Creswell, who was mayor of Northampton and rich and childless, adopted Preston, placing him at the Northampton Grammar School, and subsequently with a Bedfordshire clergyman named Guest for instruction in Greek.
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Joseph M. Tanner
1859 - 1927 (68 years)
Joseph Marion "Jay" Tanner was an American educator and a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . He has been described as "one of the most gifted teachers and writers in the [LDS] Church in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries".
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Georg Schomann
1539 - 1591 (52 years)
Georg Schomann was a Socinian theologian. In his youth, was distinguished by a deep Catholic religiosity. In the years 1552-1554 he studied at the Kraków Academy and then at Wittenberg, where he was Lutheran. He soon converted to Calvinism, and moved to Pińczów, where from 1558-1561 he taught at the local school and was a Protestant minister in churches in Pińczów and Książ. He was one of the authors of the Polish Brest Bible . In Pińczów he funded and founded a library, mainly the work of the Swiss reformers, for the sum of 40 ducats. Here, too, he married.
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Anthony Brookby
Anthony Brookby was an English Franciscan theologian. He offended Henry VIII, and became a Catholic martyr. Brookby was a lecturer in theology at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was versed in Greek and Hebrew, and enjoyed a reputation as an eloquent preacher. In a sermon of Brookby's, he attacked the king's actions and mode of living.
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Abner Kneeland
1774 - 1844 (70 years)
Abner Kneeland was an American evangelist and theologian who advocated views on women's rights, racial equality, and religious skepticism that were radical for his day. As a young man, Kneeland was a lay preacher in a Baptist church, but he converted to Universalism and was ordained as a minister. Later in life, he rejected revealed religion and Universalism's Christian God. Due to provocative statements he published, Massachusetts convicted Kneeland under its rarely used blasphemy law. Kneeland was the last man in the United States jailed for blasphemy. After his sentence, he founded a uto...
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Benjamin Ursinus von Bär
1646 - 1720 (74 years)
Benjamin Ursinus von Bär was the Court Preacher to the Elector of Brandenburg, and was a bishop of the protestant Reformed Church descendant from a family of clergymen. Early life Ursinus was born into a family of high ranking clergymen at Lissa; his grandfather David Ursinus was Court Preacher to the Carolath Castle in Lower Silesia. Ursinus' father was the first Vice Rector in Lissa before becoming a pastor in 1648. Ursinus was raised in Danzig and was enrolled as a theology student in Heidelberg in 1663. Afterwards, on the suggestion of his teachers, he was ordained as a secret preacher i...
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Friedrich Ludwig Weidig
1791 - 1837 (46 years)
Friedrich Ludwig Weidig was a German Protestant theologian, pastor, activist, teacher and journalist. Initially working as a teacher in Butzbach, he then spent a short time as a pastor in Ober-Gleen, a district of Giessen. In what is now Hesse and the Middle Rhine, he was one of the main figures of the Vormärz and a pioneer of the 1848 Revolution.
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Robert Abbot
1588 - 1662 (74 years)
Robert Abbot was an English theologian who promoted puritan doctrines. With a living at Cranbrook, Kent, he wrote anti-Catholic works and cultivated a local circle among the Kent gentry. Biography Robert Abbot received his education at Cambridge University, and later at Oxford University. The details of Abbot's ecclesiastical career are somewhat unclear, and can only be pieced together from fragmentary evidence, but based on something he wrote in his work Bee Thankfull London and her Sisters, it is probable that he began his church service with a posting as "assistant to a reverend divine". A...
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James Parkes
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
James William Parkes was an Anglican clergyman, historian, and social activist. With the publication of The Jew and His Neighbour in 1929, he created the foundations of a Christian re-evaluation of Judaism. He also published under the pseudonym John Hadham.
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Marcus Fronius
1659 - 1713 (54 years)
Marcus Fronius was a Lutheran theologian, pedagogue, and author whose published works covered topics such as theology, metaphysics, and humoral physiology. Fronius, a Transylvanian Saxon, was born in Neustadt, Siebenbürgen, and studied under the tutelage of Johann Deutschmann and Abraham Calovius, obtaining an M.Th. from the University of Wittenberg in 1682.
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Johann Conrad Klemm
1655 - 1717 (62 years)
Johann Conrad Klemm was a Lutheran theologian of Germany. Life Johann Conrad Klemm was born in Herrenberg, Württemberg, on 23 November 1655. He studied at Tübingen, became a deacon in Metzingen in 1683 and a clergyman in Stuttgart in 1688, in 1700 a professor at Tübingen and in 1711 a full professor of theology there. He died in Tübingen on 18 February 1717.
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Giles de Coninck
1571 - 1633 (62 years)
Giles de Coninck was a Flemish Jesuit theologian. Alphonsus Liguori considered Coninck a moral theologian of distinction, though John de Lugo impugned his views on many questions. Life At the age of 21 he entered the Society of Jesus. During his course of studies at the Catholic University of Leuven he had Lessius among his professors. He became the successor of his teacher in the chair of scholastic theology, which he held for eighteen years.
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Peter Medd
1829 - 1908 (79 years)
Peter Goldsmith Medd was an English Anglican priest and scholar. Life Medd was educated at King's College London and at University College, Oxford . He obtained his BA degree in 1852 and was appointed as a Fellow of University College in the same year, holding this position until 1877. He served the college as tutor, dean, librarian, and bursar. He was a long-serving member of the Council of Keble College, Oxford, having played an active part in the college's foundation. He was an ordained priest in the Church of England and was curate of St John the Baptist, Oxford , and later rector of Barnes, London , and of North Cerney, Gloucestershire .
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Matthias Döring
1390 - 1469 (79 years)
Matthias Döring was a German Franciscan historian and theologian. He was born and died at Kyritz, Brandenburg. Life He joined the Friars Minor in his native place, studied at the University of Oxford, was graduated at Erfurt as doctor of theology, and for some years taught theology and Biblical exegesis. In 1427 he was elected provincial of his order for Saxony.
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Georg Cruciger
1575 - 1637 (62 years)
Georg Cruciger was a German Calvinist theologian and linguist. Life He was born in Merseburg, son of Caspar Cruciger the Younger. Cruciger taught theology at Marburg. He was one of the representatives of Hesse-Kassel at the Synod of Dort 1618-9
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Lorenz Johann Jakob Lang
1731 - 1801 (70 years)
Lorenz Johann Jakob Lang was a German theologian, born in Selb, in the principality of Baireuth on 10 May 1731. He was the son of a stocking-maker, and being destined by his father to follow the same trade, he contended in his desire for study, which he early manifested, with many difficulties. By the assistance of his pastor, however, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Latin and Greek, and entered in 1743 the lyceum at Culmbach. Indefatigable in his industry, he became thoroughly versed in philosophy and theology, as is evinced in the disputations De praestantia philosophiae Wolfianae, ...
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