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,
#3051
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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Lucas Trelcatius
1542 - 1602 (60 years)
Lucas Trelcatius , was a theologian and writer from the Northern Netherlands. Biography Trelcatius was born in Atrecht but raised as a clerical scholar in Douai thanks to his aunt who was mater in a nunnery there. When he came of age, he traveled to France where he studied theology in Paris and Orleans. In Orleans he became disillusioned with corruption in the Catholic church and turned to Protestantism. Losing his stipend from his Catholic aunt, he found aid from some merchants from Rijsel who offered to support his studies in return for preaching the Protestant faith in their town. His pos...
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John James Blunt
1794 - 1855 (61 years)
John James Blunt was an English Anglican priest. His writings included studies of the early Church. Life Blunt was born at Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree as fifteenth wrangler in 1816 and obtained a fellowship. He was appointed a Worts travelling bachelor 1818, and spent some time in Italy and Sicily, afterwards publishing an account of his journey. He proceeded MA in 1819, BD 1826, and was Hulsean Lecturer in 1831-1832 while holding a curacy in Shropshire.
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Thomas de Vallgornera
1595 - 1665 (70 years)
Thomas de Vallgornera was a Spanish Dominican theologian and ascetical writer. Life He was a member of the convent of Barcelona, and for some time, while Catalonia was subject to the French, was its vicar-general, about 1642.
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John Wall
1620 - 1679 (59 years)
John Wall, was an English Franciscan friar, who is honoured as a martyr by the Catholic Church. Wall served on the English mission in Worcestershire for twenty-two years before being arrested and executed at the time of Titus Oates's alleged plot.
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John-Baptist Hackett
1606 - 1676 (70 years)
John-Baptist Hackett was an Irish Catholic theologian. Biography Hackett was born at Fethard, co. Tipperary, Ireland, and was educated in the Dominican convent at Cashel, where he became a member of that order.
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Clement of Llanthony
1100 - 1170 (70 years)
Clement of Llanthony was an Anglo-Norman clergyman and theologian who became prior of Llanthony Priory. Clement became a canon at Llanthony at a young age, and was educated there. Having held the office of sub-prior, he became prior around 1150, and died sometime after 1167, although the year is not known.
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Joannes Maxentius
450 - 600 (150 years)
John Maxentius as the Byzantine leader of the so-called Scythian monks, a christological minority. Biography He appears in history at Constantinople in 519 and 520. The Scythian monks adapted the formula: "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh" to exclude Nestorianism and Monophysitism, and they sought to have the works of Faustus of Riez condemned as being tainted with Pelagianism. On both these points they met with opposition. John Maxentius presented an appeal to the papal legates then at Constantinople.
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Caspar Wistar Hodge Jr.
1870 - 1937 (67 years)
Caspar Wistar Hodge Jr. was an American theologian. He was the son of Caspar Wistar Hodge Sr., and grandson of Charles Hodge, and like both of them, he taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, serving as Professor of Systematic Theology from 1915 to 1937.
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Ibn Hamdan
1206 - 1295 (89 years)
Abū Abd-Allah Najm al-Dīn Aḥmad bin Ḥamdān bin Shabīb bin Ḥamdān al-Ḥarrānī al-Ḥanbalī commonly known as Ibn Hamdan—was a Hanbalite Muslim scholar and judge . Ibn Hamdan was born and raised in Harran and later in his life went on trips to Damascus, Aleppo and Jerusalem, later settling in Cairo. Ibn Hamdan was appointed judge in Cairo and he lived there until his death in 1295.
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Pedro de Lerma
1461 - 1541 (80 years)
Pedro de Lerma was a Spanish theologian. De Lerma was born in Burgos, in northern Spain, and studied at the University of Paris. Within the University, he first taught arts at the Collège de Navarre, then from 1500 was at the Collège de Sorbonne, and earned a doctorate in theology in 1504. In 1506 he was appointed canon in Burgos, then in 1508 became the first chancellor of the University of Alcalá. He was part of the pro-Erasmus faction at a conference in Valladolid in June through August 1527 called by the Inquisition to investigate Erasmus's writings. He resigned as chancellor of Alcalá in 1535, and returned to Burgos.
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James Dixon
1758 - 1840 (82 years)
James Dixon was an Irish Catholic priest who was transported to Australia and in 1803 became the first Catholic priest permitted to minister there. Early life and education James Dixon was born in 1758 in Castlebridge, County Wexford. As was common for Irish priests, he trained for the priesthood overseas, at the universities of Salamanca and Louvain, then became curate at Crossabeg near Wexford. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798 he was arrested and tried for involvement and convicted, although there was considerable evidence that he was innocent. He was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to transportation for life to New South Wales.
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Pierre Richier
1506 - 1580 (74 years)
Pierre Richier, also Pierre Richer, dit de Lisle, was a French Calvinist theologian, who accompanied Philippe de Corguilleray on a French expedition to Brazil in 1556, to reinforce the colony of France Antarctique. He was a member of a contingent of 14 Calvinist people dispatched from Geneva. He later became the main actor in developing La Rochelle as a Huguenot capital.
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Robert Parker
1564 - 1614 (50 years)
Robert Parker was an English Puritan clergyman and scholar. He became minister of a separatist congregation in Holland where he died while in exile for his heterodoxy. The Revd. Cotton Mather wrote of Parker as "one of the greatest scholars in the English Nation, and in some sort the father of all Nonconformists of our day."
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Francesco Amico
1578 - 1651 (73 years)
Francesco Amico was a prominent Catholic theologian, born in Cosenza, in Calabria, 2 April 1578. Biography Francesco Amico entered the Society of Jesus in 1596. For twenty-four years he was professor of theology at Naples, Aquila, and Gratz, and, for five years, chancellor in the academy of Gratz. He was scholastic in his method, adapting his treatises to a four-year course of teaching. He wrote De Deo Uno et Trino; De Natura Angelorum; De Ultimo Fine; De Fide, Spe, et Charitate; De Justitia et Jure, which was prohibited, 18 June 1651 donec corrigatur, on account of three propositions in it, which Pope Alexander VII and Innocent XI objected to.
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George Wishart
1703 - 1785 (82 years)
George Wishart was a Scottish minister who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1748. He was also Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the King of England and Dean of the Chapel Royal.
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Deceneus
100 BC - 100 BC (0 years)
Deceneus or Decaeneus was a priest of Dacia during the reign of Burebista . He is mentioned in the near-contemporary Greek Geographica of Strabo and in the 6th-century Latin Getica of Jordanes, where he is called Dicineus.
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Francis Patrick McFarland
1819 - 1874 (55 years)
Francis Patrick McFarland was an American Catholic bishop who served as the third Bishop of Hartford. Biography His parents, John McFarland and Mary McKeever, emigrated from Armagh, and took up farming near Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Francis was employed as teacher in the village school, but soon entered Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he graduated with high honours and was retained as teacher. The following year, 1845, he was ordained, 18 May, at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York by Archbishop Hughes, who immediately detailed the young priest to a professor's chair at St.
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William Adams Brown
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
William Adams Brown was an American minister, professor and philanthropist. Early life Brown was born in New York City on December 29, 1865, and named after his maternal grandfather, the Rev. William Adams. He was the eldest son of John Crosby Brown and Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown. His siblings were Eliza Coe Adams, Mary Magoun Brown, James Crosby Brown, Thatcher Magoun Brown, and Amy Brighthurst Brown .
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Alexander Roberts
1826 - 1901 (75 years)
Alexander Roberts was a 19th-century Scottish biblical scholar. Life Born at Marykirk, Kincardineshire, on 12 May 1826, he was the son of Alexander Roberts, a flax-spinner, and his wife, Helen Stuart. He was educated at the grammar school and King's College, Aberdeen, where he graduated MA in March 1847, being the Simpson Greek prizeman. From 1849 to 1851 he trained as a minister of the Free Church of Scotland at New College, Edinburgh.
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Charles Backus Storrs
1794 - 1833 (39 years)
Rev. Charles Backus Storrs was an American minister, abolitionist, and the first President of Western Reserve College and Preparatory School, now Case Western Reserve University and Western Reserve Academy.
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Zachary Brooke
1716 - 1788 (72 years)
Zachary Brooke was an English clergyman and academic, Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Life The son of Zachary Brooke, a graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge , and at one time vicar of Hawkston-cum-Newton, near Cambridge, was born in 1716 at Hamerton, Huntingdonshire. He was educated at Stamford school, and was admitted a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, 28 June 1734. He was subsequently elected a fellow there, proceeded B.A. in 1737, M.A. in 1741, B.D. in 1748, and D.D. in 1753.
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