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,
#3451
Norbert of Xanten
1080 - 1134 (54 years)
Norbert of Xanten, O. Praem , also known as Norbert Gennep, was a bishop of the Catholic Church, founder of the Premonstratensian order of canons regular, and is venerated as a saint. Norbert was canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582, and his statue appears above the Piazza colonnade of St. Peter's Square in Rome.
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Zygmunt Łoziński
1870 - 1932 (62 years)
Zygmunt Łoziński was a Polish Roman Catholic bishop who served as the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev that later was aggregated to the Diocese of Pinsk. Soviet authorities arrested him on two occasions during his episcopate.
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Zacharias Ursinus
1534 - 1583 (49 years)
Zacharias Ursinus was a sixteenth-century German Reformed theologian and Protestant reformer, born Zacharias Baer in Breslau . He became the leading theologian of the Reformed Protestant movement of the Palatinate, serving both at the University of Heidelberg and the College of Wisdom . He is best known as the principal author and interpreter of the Heidelberg Catechism.
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Benedict Pictet
1655 - 1724 (69 years)
Benedict Pictet was a Genevan Reformed theologian. Life He was born at Geneva on 19 May 1655. After receiving a university education there, he made an extensive tour of Europe. He then assumed pastoral duties at Geneva, and in 1686 was appointed professor of theology. He died there on 10 January 1724, at the age of 68. Pictet was a nephew of Francis Turretin, who called him to "his bedside when dying, not his son," and Pictect preached his uncle's funeral sermon.
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Johann Friedrich
1836 - 1917 (81 years)
Johann Friedrich was a German theologian. He was prominent as a leader of the Old Catholics. Biography He was born at Poxdorf in Upper Franconia, and was educated at Bamberg and at the University of Munich. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1859. In 1865, he was appointed extraordinary professor of theology. In 1867, he was appointed to the Academy of Sciences. He was a pupil of Ignaz von Döllinger.
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Rudolf Ewald Stier
1800 - 1862 (62 years)
Rudolf Ewald Stier , was a German Protestant churchman and mystic. Stier was born at Fraustadt in South Prussia and studied at the University of Halle and Humboldt University, Berlin, first law and afterwards theology; he continued his theological studies later at the pastoral seminary of Wittenberg. In 1824 he was made professor at the Missionary Institute in Basel. Afterwards he held pastorates at Frankleben near Merseburg and at Wichlinghausen . In 1850 he was appointed superintendent at Schkeuditz, and in 1859 at Eisleben.
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Franz Anton Knittel
1721 - 1792 (71 years)
Franz Anton Knittel was a German, Lutheran orthodox theologian, priest, and palaeographer. He examined palimpsests' text of the Codex Guelferbytanus 64 Weissenburgensis and deciphered text of Codex Carolinus. He was the author of many works.
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Johann Heinrich Kurtz
1809 - 1890 (81 years)
Johann Heinrich Kurtz was a German Lutheran theologian. Kurtz was born in Monschau near Aachen and educated at Halle and Bonn. Abandoning the idea of a commercial career, he gave himself to the study of theology and became religious instructor at the gymnasium of Mitau in 1835, and ordinary professor of theology at Dorpat. He resigned his chair in 1870 and went to live at Marburg.
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Hans Tausen
1494 - 1561 (67 years)
Hans Tausen a.k.a the Danish Luther was the leading Lutheran theologian of the Danish Reformation in Denmark. He served as Bishop of Ribe and published the first translation of the Pentateuch into Danish in 1535.
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Natanael Beskow
1865 - 1953 (88 years)
Fredrik Natanael Beskow was a Swedish theologian and school headmaster. He was also active as a preacher, writer, artist, pacifist and social activist. Beskow published a number of collections of sermons. He also made substantial contributions as a hymn writer.
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Francesco Morano
1872 - 1968 (96 years)
Francesco Morano was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Secretary of the Apostolic Signatura in the Roman Curia from 1935 until 1959, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1959.
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Max Kadushin
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
Max Kadushin was a Conservative rabbi best known for his organic philosophy of rabbinics. Biography Born in Minsk, Max Kadushin grew up in Seattle; his father operated a store for gold miners going to the Klondike. Kadushin came to New York in 1912. After graduating from New York University and getting a B.A. in 1912, Kadushin studied for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and was ordained in 1920. There he encountered Mordecai Kaplan and soon became a key figure in Kaplan's Reconstructionist Judaism movement. As his studies in aggadah continued during the late 1920s,...
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Gottfrid Billing
1841 - 1925 (84 years)
Axel Gottfrid Leonard Billing was a Swedish cleric and theologian who served as a member of the Swedish Academy, member of the Första kammaren in the Riksdag and Bishop of Lund from 1898 until 1925.
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Henry Owen
1716 - 1795 (79 years)
Henry Owen was a Welsh theologian and biblical scholar. In biblical scholarship he discussed the date of publication and the form and manner of the composition of the four canonical gospel accounts.
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John Jay Butler
1814 - Present (212 years)
John Jay Butler was an ordained minister and theologian in the early Free Will Baptist movement in New England, serving as Professor of Systematic Theology at Cobb Divinity School at Bates College in Maine and later at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
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Samuel Przypkowski
1592 - 1670 (78 years)
Samuel Przypkowski was a Polish Socinian theologian, a leading figure in the Polish Brethren and an advocate of religious toleration. In Dissertatio de pace et concordia ecclesiae, published in 1628 in Amsterdam, he called for mutual tolerance by Christians. He was also a poet in Latin and Polish.
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Frederick William Faber
1814 - 1863 (49 years)
Frederick William Faber was a noted English hymnwriter and theologian, who converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1845. He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood subsequently in 1847. His best-known work is the hymn "Faith of Our Fathers".
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Thomas Fuller
1608 - 1661 (53 years)
Thomas Fuller was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen .
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August Wilhelm Dieckhoff
1823 - 1894 (71 years)
August Wilhelm Dieckhoff was a German Lutheran theologian known for his studies on the history of evangelical doctrine during the Reformation. In 1850 he obtained his habilitation from the University of Göttingen, and several years later became an associate professor of systematic and historical theology . In 1860 he was appointed professor of historical theology at the University of Rostock. In 1887 he was named rector of the university. From 1860 to 1864, with Theodor Kliefoth, he edited the Theologische Zeitschrift.
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Pope Urban V
1310 - 1370 (60 years)
Pope Urban V , born Guillaume de Grimoard, was the head of the Catholic Church from 28 September 1362 until his death, in December 1370 and was also a member of the Order of Saint Benedict. He was the only Avignon pope to be beatified.
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Benjamin Keach
1640 - 1704 (64 years)
Benjamin Keach was an English Reformed Baptist preacher and author whose name was given to Keach's Catechism. Biography Keach was born on 29 February 1640 to John and Fedora Keeche at Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire. His parents were poor. Keach worked as a tailor during his early years. He was baptized at the age of 15 by John Russell, the minister of an Arminian Baptist church at Chesham, Buckinghamshire. In 1659, at the age of 18, Keach began preaching, and was the minister of the congregation at Winslow. The next year, the Stuart Restoration returned Charles II to the throne of England, and in the years that followed, the penal laws proscribed Protestant nonconformity.
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Park Yun-sun
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Park Yun-Sun was a Korean biblical scholar born in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province. After completing his undergraduate studies at Soongsil University, he enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary in the US. Then, he went on to Holland for further theological training . In 1979, he completed his voluminous and historic scholarly work on the commentaries of all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. Park has been considered to be the pre-eminent Calvin scholar in Korea. He taught at Kosin University , Chongshin University , and Hapdong Theological Seminary . He introduced to Koreans the works of C.
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Friedrich Samuel Bock
1716 - 1786 (70 years)
Friedrich Samuel Bock was a German philosopher and theologian. In 1753 he was appointed first professor of Greek, then theology at the University of Königsberg, though he resigned both positions in 1770 due to the university's failure to pay a salary, plus the onerous duty that the professor of Greek had to lecture on the whole of the New Testament annually.
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Michel Le Quien
1661 - 1733 (72 years)
Michel Le Quien was a French historian and theologian. He studied at Plessis College, Paris, and at twenty entered the Dominican convent in Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he made his profession in 1682. Excepting occasional short absences he never left Paris. At the time of his death he was librarian of the convent in Rue Saint-Honoré, a position which he had filled almost all his life, lending assistance to those who sought information on theology and ecclesiastical antiquity. Under the supervision of Père Marsollier he mastered the classical languages, Arabic and Hebrew, to the detriment, it...
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Johann Lorenz von Mosheim
1693 - 1755 (62 years)
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim or Johann Lorenz Mosheim was a German Lutheran church historian. Biography He was born at Lübeck on 9 October 1693 or 1694. After studying at the gymnasium of Lübeck, he entered the University of Kiel , where he took his master's degree in 1718. In 1719 he became assessor in the philosophical faculty at Kiel.
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Josip Juraj Strossmayer
1815 - 1905 (90 years)
Josip Juraj Strossmayer, also Štrosmajer was a Croatian politician, Roman Catholic bishop, and benefactor. Early life and rise as a cleric Strossmayer was born in Osijek to a Croatian family. His great-grandfather was an ethnic German immigrant from Styria who had married a Croatian woman. He finished school at a gymnasium in Osijek, and then graduated theology at the Catholic seminary in Đakovo. He earned a PhD in philosophy at a high seminary in Budapest, at the age of 20.
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Guy Hershberger
1896 - 1989 (93 years)
Guy F. Hershberger was an American Mennonite theologian, educator, historian, and prolific author particularly in the field of Mennonite ethics. Life Born in Johnson County, Iowa, to Ephraim D. and Dorinda Kempf Hershberger, Hershberger was one of nine children. He was baptized in 1909 at his home congregation of East Union Amish Mennonite Church, where Sanford Calvin Yoder was pastor. He began work as an educator immediately out of high school in 1915 as a teacher in rural schools, where he remained for five years until his marriage to Clara Hooley on 1 August 1920. They had two children who survived into adulthood; Elizabeth , born in 1924, and Paul, born 1934.
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Francis Xavier Schmalzgrueber
1663 - 1735 (72 years)
Francis Xavier Schmalzgrueber was a German Jesuit canonist. Schmalzgrueber was born at Griesbach, Bavaria. Entering the Society of Jesus in 1679, he made his studies at Ingolstadt, obtaining the doctorate both in theology and canon law. He taught humanities at Munich, Dillingen, and Neuburg; philosophy at Mindelheim, Augsburg, and Ingolstadt; dogmatic theology at Innsbruck and Lucerne. From 1703 to 1716 he was professor of canon law, alternating between Dillingen and Ingolstadt. He was twice chancellor of the University of Dillingen; for two years censor of books for the Jesuits at Rome, and for a like period prefect of studies at Munich.
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Hans Hinrich Wendt
1853 - 1928 (75 years)
Hans Hinrich Wendt was a German Protestant theologian. Life After studying theology at Leipzig, Göttingen and Tübingen, he became in 1885 professor ordinarius of systematic theology at Heidelberg, and in 1893 was called to Jena. His work on the teaching of Jesus made him widely known. He also edited several editions of the Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles in Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer's series. In May 1904 he delivered two addresses in London on The Idea and Reality of Revelation, and Typical Forms of Christianity, as the Essex Hall Lectures .
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Gerhard Wolter Molanus
1633 - 1722 (89 years)
Gerhard Wolter Molanus was Lutheran theologian and abbot of Loccum. Biography He studied theology at Helmstedt; and in 1659 was appointed professor of mathematics and theology at University of Rinteln. 1671 Molanus became conventual of a Lutheran Loccum Abbey and 1672 coadjutor of the abbot. There he lived in celibacy according to the Rule of St. Benedict. In 1674 Duke John Frederick called him to Hanover as director of the consistory after Justus Gesenius . 1677 he became abbot of Loccum under title Gerhard I, one of the most influential offices in the duchy.
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Tilman Pesch
1836 - 1899 (63 years)
Tilman Pesch , was a German Jesuit philosopher. Life He became a Jesuit on 15 October 1852, and made his novitiate at Friedrichsburg near Münster; he studied classics two years at Paderborn, philosophy two years at Bonn; taught four years at Feldkirch, Austria; studied theology one year at Paderborn and three years at Maria-Laach, after which he made his third year of novitiate at Paderborn. He then taught philosophy at Maria-Laach . From 1870 to 1876 he worked in the ministry, and again taught philosophy eight years , at the Castle of Bleijenbeek in Afferden.
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Christoph Moufang
1817 - 1890 (73 years)
Franz Christoph Ignaz Moufang was a German Catholic theologian and diocesan administrator. Life Education Moufang was born at Mainz, where he also received his primary education. In 1834 he entered the Rhenish Frederick William's University of Bonn, first taking up medicine, but soon turning to theology. Among his masters were Klee, Windischmann, and Walter. In 1837 he went to Munich, and then next year took the prescribed theological examinations at Gießen, after which he entered the ecclesiastical seminary at Mainz, where he was ordained to the priesthood on 19 December 1839. His first ap...
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Rupert of Deutz
1075 - 1129 (54 years)
Rupert of Deutz was an influential Benedictine theologian, exegete and writer on liturgical and musical topics. Life Rupert was most likely born in or around Liège in the years 1075-1080, and there, as was the custom, was brought by his family as an oblate to the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Laurent in Liège, which already a generation earlier had become a notable centre of learning, including mathematics, hagiography, and poetry. There Rupert eventually made monastic profession and was educated under the capable Abbot, Berengar.
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Wilhelm Abraham Teller
1734 - 1804 (70 years)
Wilhelm Abraham Teller was a German Protestant theologian who championed a rational approach to Christianity. Life and career Teller was born in Leipzig. His father, Romanus Teller , was a pastor at Leipzig, and afterwards became professor of theology in the University of Leipzig. He edited the earlier volumes of a which was designed as an adaptation for German readers of the exegetical works of Andrew Willet, Henry Ainsworth, Simon Patrick, Matthew Poole, Matthew Henry and others. Wilhelm Abraham studied philosophy and theology in the university of his native town. Amongst the men whose in...
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Thomas Hartwell Horne
1780 - 1862 (82 years)
Thomas Hartwell Horne was an English theologian and librarian. Life He was born in London and educated at Christ's Hospital until he was 15 when his father died and he had to work. He then became a clerk to a barrister, and used his spare time to write.
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Gaston Frommel
1862 - 1906 (44 years)
Gaston Frommel was a French-Swiss protestant pastor and professor of theology at the University of Geneva from 1894 until his death. Life A Frenchman by birth, his family fled Alsace under German occupation in 1870 and he spent the rest of his life in Switzerland. He may best be described as continuing the spirit of Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet amid the mental conditions marking the end of the 19th century.
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Jean Lasserre
1908 - 1983 (75 years)
Jean Lasserre was a pastor of the Reformed Church of France, a peace theologian, the travel secretary of the French branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and the editor of the Cahiers de la Réconciliation, a French-language magazine. His book, The War and the Gospel made him internationally known.
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Eustathius of Thessalonica
1101 - 1198 (97 years)
Eustathius of Thessalonica was a Byzantine Greek scholar and Archbishop of Thessalonica and is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is most noted for his stand against the sack of Thessalonica by the Normans in 1185, contemporary account of the event, for his orations and for his commentaries on Homer, which incorporate many remarks by much earlier researchers.
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Edward Garbett
1817 - 1887 (70 years)
Edward Garbett , was a religious figure and writer of the 19th century. Garbett was born in Hereford on 10 December 1817, the sixth son of the Reverend James Garbett , custos rotulorum and prebendary of Hereford Cathedral. He was educated at Hereford Cathedral School, and then Brasenose College, Oxford. He obtained a B.A. in 1841 and M.A. in 1847.
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John Capreolus
1380 - 1444 (64 years)
John Capreolus, in French Jean Capréolus and in Latin Johannes Capreolus , was a French Dominican theologian and Thomist. He is sometimes known as the Prince of the Thomists. His Four Books of Defenses of the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas can be said to have sparked a revival in Thomism.
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David Beaton
1494 - 1546 (52 years)
David Beaton was Archbishop of St Andrews and the last Scottish cardinal prior to the Reformation. Career Cardinal Beaton was the sixth and youngest son of eleven children of John Beaton of Balfour in the county of Fife, and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir David Boswell of Balmuto. The Bethunes of Balfour were part of Clan Bethune, the Scottish branch of the noble French House of Bethune. The Cardinal is said to have been born in 1494. He was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, and in his sixteenth year was sent to Paris, where he studied civil and canon law. In 1519 King ...
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Wolfgang Friedrich Gess
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Wolfgang Friedrich Gess was a German Lutheran theologian. Life Gess was a teacher of theology in Basel from 1850 to 1864. After that, he became Professor of Systematic Theology in Göttingen, and frpom 1871 in Breslau. In 1879 he succeeded the deceased General Superintendent in Posen, Friedrich Cranz . Gess entered upon his duties in April 1880 and as general superintendent of the Old Prussian, he headed the Church province of Posen until 1884. He was succeeded by Johannes Hesekiel, and settled down in Wernigerode.
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Hugh James Rose
1795 - 1838 (43 years)
Hugh James Rose was an English Anglican priest and theologian who served as the second Principal of King's College, London. Life Rose was born at Little Horsted in Sussex on 9 June 1795 and educated at Uckfield School, where his father was Master, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was conferred the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1817, but missed a fellowship. He was then President of the Cambridge Union Society for the Michaelmas term of 1817. Having been ordained to the diaconate in 1818, he was appointed to a cure in Buxted, Sussex, in 1819. He married Anne Cuyler and was priested later that year.
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Francis Alison
1705 - 1779 (74 years)
Francis Alison was a leading minister in the Synod of Philadelphia during The Old Side-New Side Controversy Biography Early life and education Alison was born in Donegal, Ireland and studied at the University of Glasgow. It appears he arrived in the United States in 1734 or 1735 in order to help the fledgling Presbyterian Church as a minister. He was ordained a full-fledged minister in 1737 and served the New London congregation.
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Daniel Williams
1643 - 1716 (73 years)
Daniel Williams was a British benefactor, minister and theologian, within the Presbyterian tradition, i.e. a Christian outside the Church of England. He is known largely for the legacy he left which led to the creation of Dr Williams's Library, a centre for research on English Dissenters.
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Pierre d'Ailly
1350 - 1420 (70 years)
Pierre d'Ailly was a French theologian, astrologer and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Academic career D'Ailly was born in Compiègne in 1350 or 1351 of a prosperous bourgeois family. He studied in Paris at the Collège de Navarre, receiving the licentiate in arts in 1367 and the master’s a year later, and was active in university affairs by 1372. D'Ailly taught the Bible in 1375 and the Sentences of Peter Lombard in 1376–1377, and received the licentiate and doctorate in theology in 1381. He was affiliated with the university, serving as rector in 1384; among his pupils were Jean Gers...
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Leonard Hodgson
1889 - 1969 (80 years)
Leonard Hodgson was an Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, historian of the early Church and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1958. Early life Hodgson was the son of Walter Hodgson , a shorthand writer to the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and of his wife Lillias Emma, a daughter of William Shaw of County Durham. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Hertford College, Oxford, where he took a second in Classical Moderations in 1910, a first in Greats in 1912 and a first in Theology in 1913. He then trained for the ministry at St...
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Pope Innocent II
1100 - 1143 (43 years)
Pope Innocent II , born Gregorio Papareschi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 14 February 1130 to his death in 1143. His election as pope was controversial and the first eight years of his reign were marked by a struggle for recognition against the supporters of Anacletus II. He reached an understanding with King Lothair III of Germany who supported him against Anacletus and whom he crowned as Holy Roman emperor. Innocent went on to preside over the Second Lateran council.
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Robert Newton Flew
1886 - 1962 (76 years)
Robert Newton Flew was an English Methodist minister and theologian, and an advocate of ecumenism among the Christian churches. Family and education Robert Newton Flew was born at Holsworthy, Devon, on 25 May 1886, the older son of Josiah Flew , a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and his wife, Florence Jones . Originally from Portland, Dorset, the family moved during Flew's childhood to Wiltshire and Warwickshire, and then to the suburbs of London. There Flew won a scholarship in 1897 to the independent school Christ's Hospital, followed by a "postmastership" to Merton College, Oxford, where he read classics and theology.
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John Brown
1784 - 1858 (74 years)
John Brown was a Scottish minister and theologian, known for his exegesis as a preacher. Life The grandson of John Brown of Haddington, he was born at Whitburn, Linlithgowshire. He studied at Glasgow university, and afterwards at the divinity hall of the Burgher branch of the Secession church at Selkirk, under George Lawson. In 1806 he was ordained minister of the Burgher congregation at Biggar, Lanarkshire, where he laboured for sixteen years. While there he had a controversy with Robert Owen the socialist.
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