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
Gerhoh of Reichersberg
1092 - 1169 (77 years)
Gerhoh of Reichersberg was one of the most distinguished theologians of Germany in the twelfth century. He was provost of Reichersberg Abbey and a Canon Regular. He studied at Freising, Moosburg, and Hildesheim. In 1119, Bishop Hermann of Augsburg called him as "scholasticus" to the cathedral school of that city; shortly afterwards, though still a deacon, he made him a canon of the cathedral. Gradually Gerhoh adopted a stricter ecclesiastical attitude, and eventually withdrew from the simoniacal Bishop Hermann, and took refuge in the monastery of Raitenbuch in the Diocese of Freising. After ...
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Joseph Anthony Murphy
1857 - 1939 (82 years)
Joseph Anthony Murphy was born in Ireland but raised in Chicago. He became a Jesuit priest and served, inter alia, as dean of the liberal arts college at Marquette University for eleven years and as Vicar Apostolic for the Catholic mission in British Honduras , Central America, being ordained bishop on March 19, 1924.
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Marcus Jacob Monrad
1816 - 1897 (81 years)
Marcus Jacob Monrad was a Norwegian philosopher, a university professor for more than 40 years. Biography Monrad was born in Nøtterøy to parish priest Peder Monrad and Severine Elisabeth Ambroe, and grew up in Mo in Telemark. He graduated as cand.theol. in 1840, and was appointed professor at the Royal Frederick University in 1851. Around 1850 he published three textbooks for the examen philosophicum, which were used for these courses during the rest of the 19th century. Monrad took part in contemporary debates and had significant influence, but was also controversial. He is portrayed in Arne...
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Michael Moore
1640 - 1726 (86 years)
Michael Moore was an Irish priest, philosopher and educationalist. Early life Moore – generally referred to as Moore or Moor in contemporary documents – was born in Dublin about 1639. He left Ireland at a young age to be educated in Nantes and Paris, where he taught philosophy and rhetoric at the Collège des Grassins. He was proposed for the position of rector at the University of Paris in June 1677 by a faction who wished to replace the then rector, Nicholas Pieres, but felt compelled to decline the offer.
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Veit Dietrich
1506 - 1549 (43 years)
Veit Dietrich, also Vitus Theodorus or Vitus Diterichus, was a German Lutheran theologian, writer and a reformer. Life and work Veit Dietrich was born on 8 December 1506 in Nuremberg; his father was a shoemaker. The talent of the boy was soon recognized and patronage of a wealthy benefactor enabled him to attend high school at the University of Wittenberg. He enrolled in March 1522. In University Philipp Melanchthon recognized his talent and encouraged him.
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William Augustus Larned
1806 - 1862 (56 years)
William Augustus Larned was an American minister and professor at Yale College. He was son of George Larned and grandson of Gen. Daniel Larned, of Thompson, Connecticut, and was born in that town on June 23, 1806. He graduated from Yale College in 1826. Two years after graduating he spent in teaching at Salisbury, North Carolina. Then from 1828 to 1831 he was a tutor in Yale College. At the close of this period a change in his religious convictions led him to abandon the course of law studies on which he had entered, and devote himself to theology under the guidance of Rev. Dr. Taylor, in the...
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Anthony of the Mother of God
1583 - 1637 (54 years)
Anthony of the Mother of God , O.C.D. , was a Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar, who was notable as a professor of philosophy and theology, who initiated the compilation. Career and works Born Antonio Oliva y Ordás, as a young man, he entered the Order of Discalced Carmelites around 1600. After completing his studies at their seminary, then part of the University of Salamanca, in 1609 he was ordained a Catholic priest. Anthony then taught Aristotle's dialectics and natural philosophy at another seminary of his Order, part of the Universidad Complutense, at that time located in Alcalá de Henare...
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Peter Valesius Walsh
1618 - 1688 (70 years)
Peter Walsh, O.F.M., was an Irish theologian and controversialist. Biography Peter Walsh was born near Mooretown, County Kildare. His father was a chandler in Naas, and his mother is said to have been an English protestant. He studied at Franciscan College of St. Anthony in Leuven, where he joined the Friars Minor, and acquired Jansenist sympathies.
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Edward Nares
1762 - 1841 (79 years)
Edward Nares was an English historian and theologian, and general writer. Life He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He was Fellow of Merton College, Oxford and in 1813, he became Regius Professor of Modern History. He was curate of St Peter-in-the-East, Oxford, and then rector of Biddenden from 1798, of New Church, Romney from 1827.
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Juan Martínez de Ripalda
1594 - 1648 (54 years)
Juan Martínez de Ripalda was a Spanish Jesuit theologian. Life He entered the Society of Jesus at Pamplona in 1609. In the triennial reports of 1642 he says of himself that he was not physically strong, that he had studied religion, arts, and theology, that he had taught grammar one year, arts four, theology nineteen, and had been professed. According to Southwell, he taught philosophy at Monforte, theology at Salamanca, and was called from there to the Imperial College of Madrid, where, by royal decree, he taught moral theology.
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John Brewis
1902 - 1972 (70 years)
John Salusbury Brewis was an English Anglican priest. He was the Principal of St Chad's College, Durham from 1937 to 1947, and the Archdeacon of Doncaster from 1947 to 1954. Early life and education Brewis was born on 13 May 1902. He was educated at Eton College, an all-boys public school near Windsor, Berkshire. He studied modern history at Hertford College, Oxford, graduating with a first class honours Bachelor of Arts degree. He then attended Princeton University as a Henry P. Davison Scholar. He trained for Holy Orders at Cuddesdon College, an Anglo-Catholic theological college near Oxfo...
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David Stow Adam
1859 - 1925 (66 years)
David Stow Adam was a Scottish minister and professor. David was born near Langside in Glasgow to George Adam and Jane , both schoolteachers. He matriculated to the University of Glasgow in 1874, receiving a Master of Arts degree in 1881 and a Bachelor of Divinity in 1884. He also studied at Erlangen University. Between 1881 and 1884, he taught logic and metaphysics at the University of Glasgow, later teaching Hebrew at Free Church Training College between 1885 and 1886.
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Konrad Cordatus
1480 - 1546 (66 years)
Konrad Cordatus or Conrad Cordatus was a preacher and Protestant reformer in Niemegk who severely attacked Philipp Melanchthon, German reformer and collaborator with Martin Luther, during his sojourn in Tübingen in 1536.
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Marco Vigerio della Rovere
1446 - 1516 (70 years)
Marco Vigerio della Rovere was an Italian bishop and cardinal of the Catholic Church. Biography Emmanuele Vigerio della Rovere was born in Savona in 1446, the son of Urbano Vigerio and Nicoletta Grosso della Rovere, a niece of Pope Sixtus IV.
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Helenius de Cock
1824 - 1894 (70 years)
Helenius de Cock was an instructor at the Theological School in Kampen, Overijssel, the Netherlands. He was the son of Hendrik de Cock and Frouwe Venema.
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Martin Janus
1620 - 1682 (62 years)
Martin Janus was a German Protestant minister, church musician, hymnwriter, teacher and editor. He wrote the lyrics of the hymn "Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne", which became popular in the arrangement of a Bach chorale as Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
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John J. Chanche
1795 - 1852 (57 years)
John Mary Joseph Benedict Chanche, S.S., was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the first bishop Diocese of Natchez in Mississippi from 1841 to 1852. Educated at St. Mary's College in Baltimore, Maryland, Chanche became a Sulpician and eventually president of the college.
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Jacques Bernard
1658 - 1718 (60 years)
Jacques Bernard , French theologian and publicist, who lived his entire academic career in the Dutch Republic. Life He was born at Nyons in Dauphiné. Having studied at Geneva, he returned to France in 1679, and was chosen minister of Venterol in Dauphiné. He moved to the church of Vinsobres. As he continued to preach the reformed doctrines he was obliged to leave the country and retired to Holland, where he was appointed one of the pensionary ministers of Gouda. In July 1686 he began publishing the Histoire abregée de l'Europe which he continued, monthly, till December 1688.
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Silvester Jenks
1656 - 1714 (58 years)
Silvester Jenks was an English Catholic priest and theologian. Born in Shropshire, Jenks attended the English College, Douai, where he served as Professor of Philosophy from 1680 to 1686. He later served as a preacher to James II. After the Glorious Revolution in 1688, he fled to Flanders. Upon his return to England, he laboured as a missionary in or near London and was appointed Archdeacon of Surrey and Kent. In 1711, he was elected Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District. Bishops Giffard and Witham wrote Rome to say that Jenks had been ill, and that it would be better to defer his consecration until after parliament had been dissolved to avoid any disturbance.
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Louis-Joseph Delebecque
1798 - 1864 (66 years)
Louis-Joseph Delebecque was the 21st bishop of Ghent, in Belgium, from November 1838 until his death. Life Delebecque was born in Ypres on 7 December 1796. In 1831 he was appointed professor of dogmatics at the Major Seminary of Ghent, leaving in 1833 to take up a position as secretary to Mgr Franciscus Renatus Boussen, administrator apostolic of West Flanders . In September 1833 he was appointed president of the Major Seminary, Bruges. Appointed as bishop of Ghent on 13 September 1838, he was consecrated on 4 November. On 21 December 1838, he prohibited the clergy of his diocese from any involvement with periodicals disseminating the democratic ideas of Lamennais.
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Felix-Joseph Barbelin
1808 - 1869 (61 years)
The Reverend Felix-Joseph Barbelin, S.J., called the "Apostle of Philadelphia",was a 19th-century Jesuit priest influential in the development of the Catholic community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States.
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Bernard of Trilia
1240 - 1292 (52 years)
Bernard of Trilia was a French Dominican theologian and scholastic philosopher. He was an early supporter of the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. He lectured at Montpellier. Notes External links Works listed
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David Cranston
1480 - 1512 (32 years)
David Cranston or Cranstoun was a Scottish scholastic philosopher and theologian among the circle of John Mair. Biography Cranston was certainly born in Scotland, possibly in the diocese of Glasgow, ; nothing else is known of his early life. The first record of him comes when he matriculated from the University of Paris in 1495, attending the Collège de Montaigu. He had access to a healthy supply of money during his time at the university, though he indicates in his will he was a "poor student". At the college, Cranston was a student of Scottish philosopher John Mair.
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Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās
1200 - 1261 (61 years)
Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Yahya bin Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Sayyid al-Nas al-Ya'mari, better known as Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, was a Medieval Muslim theologian. He was the grandfather of Fatḥ al-Din Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, though he died before ever meeting his grandson.
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Surendra Kumar Datta
1878 - 1948 (70 years)
Surendra Kumar Datta , also spelt as Surendra Kumar Dutta or S. K. Dutta, was the president of the All India Conference of Indian Christians and thus the Indian Christian delegate to the Second Round Table Conference in London, as well as a prominent YMCA leader, and a member of Central Legislative Assembly – also called Imperial Legislative Assembly before Indian independence – a lower house of a bicameral parliament synonymous to the current Lok Sabha after Indian independence.
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David Lewis
1616 - 1679 (63 years)
David Lewis, S.J. was a Jesuit Catholic priest and martyr who was also known as Charles Baker. Lewis was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales and is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. His feast day is celebrated on 27 August.
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John Saltmarsh
1609 - 1647 (38 years)
John Saltmarsh was an English religious radical, "One of the most gentle tongued of controversialists", writer and preacher. He supported the Covenant and was chaplain in Thomas Fairfax's army. The Dictionary of National Biography describes his theology as "Calvinistic in its base, but improved by practical knowledge of men". William Haller called him "that strange genius, part poet and part whirling dervish". He preached Free Grace theology, and published on the topics of Peace, Love and Unity.
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Johan Willoch Erichsen
1842 - 1916 (74 years)
Johan Willoch Erichsen was a Norwegian bishop and theologian in the Church of Norway. He was Bishop of the Diocese of Bjørgvin from 1899 until shortly before his death in 1916. Life and family Erichsen was born on 15 February 1842 in the city of Kristiansand in Lister og Mandal county in southern Norway. His father was Hans Erichsen, a church worker at the Kristiansand Cathedral, and his mother was Mathilde Sophie Willoch. He went to school and graduated in Kristiansand at the Cathedral School. He received his cand.theol. degree from the Royal Frederick University in 1864. He married Kristiane Sofie Rogstad Boeck in 1869.
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Mark Frank
1613 - 1664 (51 years)
Mark Frank or Franck was an English churchman and academic, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Life He was baptised at Little Brickhill, Buckinghamshire, and was admitted pensioner of Pembroke College, Cambridge, 4 July 1627. He was elected to a scholarship in 1630, and to a fellowship 8 October 1634, having become M.A. the same year. In 1641 he became B.D., and was chosen junior treasurer of his college, and senior treasurer in 1642.
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Simon Oomius
1628 - 1706 (78 years)
Simon Oomius or Ooms was a Dutch reformed minister and theologian. He played an important role in the Nadere Reformatie. He was born on 1 March 1630 in the village of Heenvliet, on the island of Voorne-Putten. He was the youngest of the twenty-one children of Cornelis Oomius, a preacher in Heenvliet and a native of Turnhout.
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Edmund Chishull
1670 - 1733 (63 years)
Edmund Chishull was an English clergyman and antiquary. Life He was son of Paul Chishull, and was born at Eyworth, Bedfordshire, 22 March 1670–1. He was a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1687, where he graduated B.A. in 1690, M.A. in 1693, and became a Fellow in 1696.
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Christopher Elderfield
1607 - 1652 (45 years)
Christopher Elderfield was an English clergyman and theologian. Life The son of William Elderfield, he was born at Harwell, Berkshire, where he was baptised 11 April 1607. He studied at a local school kept by Hugh Lloyd, M.A., the vicar, and in 1621 he entered St. Mary Hall, Oxford, as a batler. In due course he took the two degrees in arts and entered into holy orders.
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John Bird
1558 - 1558 (0 years)
John Bird was an English Carmelite friar and subsequently a bishop. He was Warden of the Carmelite house in Coventry, and twice Provincial of his order. He attracted the attention of Henry VIII by his preaching in favour of the royal supremacy over the English Church.
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William Peryn
William Peryn was an English Roman Catholic priest and Dominican friar who in the reign of Mary I became prior of the short-lived Priory of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, London. Life Peryn was educated at Blackfriars in Oxford and there are records of him being there in 1529 and 1531, the year in which he was ordained. He went to London and was a preacher strongly against heresy, and a chaplain to Sir John Port. Soon after Henry VIII’s Royal Act of Supremacy, 1534, he went into exile, but in 1543returned to England, when he applied for the degree of Bachelor of Theology at Oxford. He became ...
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Janko Šimrak
1883 - 1945 (62 years)
Janko Šimrak was a Croatian Greek Catholic hierarch. He was Apostolic Administrator from 1941 to 1942 and bishop from 1942 to 1946 of the Eastern Catholic Eparchy of Križevci. Life Born in Šimraki, near Samobor, Austria-Hungary in 1883, he was ordained a priest on 23 August 1908 for the Eparchy of Križevci. Fr. Šimrak was the spiritual director and then prefect of the Greek Catholic Seminary in Zagreb from 1908 to 1935.
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Peter Sterry
1613 - 1672 (59 years)
Peter Sterry was an English independent theologian, associated with the Cambridge Platonists prominent during the English Civil War era. He was chaplain to Parliamentarian general Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke and then Oliver Cromwell, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and a leading radical Puritan preacher attached to the English Council of State. He was made fun of in Hudibras.
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Johannes Rhenanus
1528 - 1589 (61 years)
Johannes Rhenanus was a German salinist, theologian, alchemist, printer and author. Life From 1548, Johannes Rhenanus studied theology in Marburg, in 1553 he was ordained by Adam Krafft, the reformer of Hessen. Between 1553 and 1554 he worked as a second pastor in his hometown. At Pentecost in 1555 Landgrave Philipp transferred him to Allendorf in Sooden. Meanwhile, he called himself no longer Rheinlandt but Latinized his name to Johannes Rhenanus. In 1566, he married Catharina Brown , daughter of the rent writer Jost Braun von Melsungen. They had five children. His second marriage was wit...
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John of Schoonhoven
1356 - 1432 (76 years)
John of Schoonhoven was a Flemish theologian and writer. After a philosophical education at the University of Paris he entered the convent of the regular canons at Groenendaal near Brussels , where he met John of Ruysbroeck. In 1386 he became prior and master to the novices. After the accession Groenendaal to the Windesheimer congregation he wrote many sermons, some of which became the most well-known writings at the general chapter. Beside these and other sermons, spiritual writings and letters, he wrote the then celebrated Epistola responsalis super epistolam cancellarii.
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Jesper Brochmand
1585 - 1652 (67 years)
Jesper Rasmussen Brochmand was a Danish Lutheran clergyman, theologian and professor who served as Bishop of the Diocese of Zealand from 1638 until his death. Brochmand was a key founder of the dogmatic system that formed the basis for the lutheran orthodoxy in Denmark.
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Edward Evanson
1731 - 1805 (74 years)
Edward Evanson was a controversial English clergyman. Life He was born at Warrington, Lancashire. After graduating at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and taking holy orders, he spent several years as curate at Mitcham in Surrey. In 1768 he became vicar of South Mimms near Barnet; and in November 1769 he was presented to the rectory of Tewkesbury, with which he held also the vicarage of Longdon in Worcestershire. In the course of his studies he discovered what he thought important variance between the teaching of the Church of England and that of the Bible, and he did not conceal his convictions. ...
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Johannes Mathesius
1504 - 1565 (61 years)
Johannes Mathesius , also called Johann Mathesius or John Mathesius, was a German minister and a Lutheran reformer. He is best known for his compilation of Martin Luther's Table Talk, or notes taken of Luther's conversation and published afterwards. He rivaled Anton Lauterbach in his diligence in notetaking, and surpassed him in the discrimination with which he arranged it.
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Hermann Thyraeus
1532 - 1591 (59 years)
Hermann Thyräus was a German Jesuit theologian and preacher. Life He studied first at Cologne, and then, after 1522, at the Collegium Germanicum at Rome. On 26 May 1556, he was received into the Society of Jesus by Ignatius Loyola.
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Giovanni Bellarini
1552 - 1630 (78 years)
Giovanni Bellarini was an Italian Roman Catholic theologian who wrote influential commentaries on the Council of Trent. He was a Barnabite. Life He was born at Castelnuovo, Italy, in 1552, and was Visitor and twice Assistant General of his order. He taught theology at Padua and Rome, and was esteemed particularly by Pope Gregory XV. He died at Milan, 27 August 1630.
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Kaspar Eberhard
1523 - 1575 (52 years)
Kaspar Eberhard was a German Lutheran theologian and teacher. He was born at Schneeberg, and died at Wittenberg. Life Bibliography Walter Friedensburg: Geschichte der Universität Wittenberg. Max Niemeyer, Halle 1917,Irene Dingel, Günther Wartenberg: Die Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg 1502 bis 1602, Leipzig 2002, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 29, Leipzig 1932, S. 97-132Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 30, Leipzig 1933, S. 43Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 31, Leipzig 1934, S. 57Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 34, Leipzig 1937, S. 167-169Christian Gottlieb Jöcher: Allgemeines Gelehrten–Lexikon.
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John Macleod
1872 - 1948 (76 years)
John Macleod was a Scottish minister and Principal of the Free Church College from 1929-43. He served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland and was the author of Scottish Theology in relation to Church History.
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Hieronim Malecki
1527 - 1583 (56 years)
Hieronim Malecki Hieronim Malecki was the son of Johannes Maletius , who was a printer of Polish language Lutheran religious literature in Königsberg in Ducal Prussia, then a fief of Kingdom of Poland. Hieronim studied in Kraków at the Jagiellonian University and then at the University of Königsberg.
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Daniel Gerdes
1698 - 1765 (67 years)
Daniel Gerdes was a German Calvinist theologian and historian. He became professor at the University of Duisburg in 1726, and at the University of Groningen in 1736. While broadly supporting Protestant freedom of conscience, Gerdes drew a line in his attacks on the Mennonite minister Johannes Stinstra. In that case Gerdes used the views of Samuel Werenfels, tolerant and well thought of by Benjamin Hoadley, to condemn Stinstra.
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Muhammad al-Kharashi
1601 - 1690 (89 years)
Imam Sheikh Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Jamal al-Din Abdullah bin Ali al-Kharshi al-Maliki , historical name Muhammad al-Kharashi Al-Kharshi is considered to be a leading Muslim scholar, well known in his time throughout the Arab World and into other Islamic kingdoms in Africa.
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Michael Griffin
1890 - 1920 (30 years)
Michael Griffin was an Irish Catholic priest who was murdered during the Irish War of Independence. Life Griffin was born in the townland of Gurteen, County Galway, to Thomas George Griffin, a farmer, and Mary Coyne . In the 1901 and 1911 censuses, the family was recorded as living in the neighbouring townland of Gortnacross. Griffin's father had been serving as the chairman of Galway County Council when he died in 1914; he had also been associated with the Irish National Land League, along with the political movement of its founder, Charles Stewart Parnell, and was imprisoned for his activit...
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Ahmad al-Wansharisi
1430 - 1508 (78 years)
Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi was an Algerian Berber Muslim theologian and jurist of the Maliki school around the time of the fall of Granada. He was one of the leading authorities on the issues of Iberian Muslims living under Christian rule.
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