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,
#3601
Gaspar García Laviana
1941 - 1978 (37 years)
Gaspar García Laviana was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest who took up arms to fight as a soldier in Nicaragua with the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1977. Early life García Laviana was born in 1941 in Les Roces, San Martin del Rey Aurelio, Principality of Asturias , moving during his childhood to Tuilla, Langreo. He was ordained a priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in 1966. Thereafter, he took charge of a church in Logroño for three years, working at the same time as a carpenter.
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William of Champeaux
1070 - 1121 (51 years)
Guillaume de Champeaux , known in English as William of Champeaux and Latinised to Gulielmus de Campellis, was a French philosopher and theologian. Biography William was born at Champeaux near Melun. After studying under Anselm of Laon and Roscellinus, he taught in the school of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, of which he was made canon in 1103. Among his pupils was Peter Abelard, whom he had a disagreement with because Abelard challenged some of his ideas, and because William thought Abelard was too arrogant. Abelard calls him the "supreme master" of dialectic after he replaced his master as the new teacher.
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Mustafa Sabri
1869 - 1954 (85 years)
Mustafa Sabri Effendi was the second last Shaykh al-Islām of the Ottoman Empire. He is known for his opinions condemning the Turkish nationalist movement under Kemal Atatürk. Due to his resistance to Atatürk, he lived half of his life in exile in various countries, and died in Egypt.
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Friedrich Heiler
1892 - 1967 (75 years)
Friedrich Heiler was a German theologian and historian of religion. Heiler came from a Roman Catholic family. 1918 he became Privatdozent in University of Munich, from where he 1920 moved to theological faculty of the University of Marburg, where he became professor 1922.
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Ebenezer Erskine
1680 - 1754 (74 years)
Ebenezer Erskine was a Scottish minister whose actions led to the establishment of the Secession Church . Early life Ebenezer's father, Henry Erskine, served as minister at Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland, but was ejected in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity and imprisoned for several years. Ebenezer and his brother Ralph were both born during this difficult period in their father's life. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Henry was appointed to the parish of Chirnside, Berwickshire.
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Johannes Weiss
1863 - 1914 (51 years)
Johannes Weiss was a German Protestant theologian and biblical exegete. He was a member of the history of religions school. History Weiss was born in Kiel as son of Bernhard Weiss. A perpetual scholar, he studied in the University of Marburg, the University of Berlin, the University of Göttingen, and the University of Breslau. He then taught as a professor at Göttingen since 1890, at Marburg since 1895, and since 1908 at the University of Heidelberg. He wrote many influential books and papers, and was instrumental in the development of New Testament biblical criticism. He was held in the high...
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Ludwig Ott
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Ludwig Ott was a Roman Catholic theologian and medievalist from Bavaria, Germany. After training at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Ott was ordained a priest in 1930. He received his doctorate in Munich under Martin Grabmann and was mentored by him in studying the development of medieval theology. In 1936 he was , and in 1941 an of dogmatics at the episcopal philosophical and theological college in Eichstätt. From 1960 to 1962 he was the rector of this Catholic university.
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Gildas
500 - 570 (70 years)
Gildas — also known as Gildas the Wise or Gildas Sapiens — was a 6th-century British monk best known for his scathing religious polemic , which recounts the history of the Britons before and during the coming of the Saxons. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during the sub-Roman period, and was renowned for his Biblical knowledge and literary style. In his later life, he emigrated to Brittany where he founded a monastery known as Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys.
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Johann Augustus Eberhard
1739 - 1809 (70 years)
Johann Augustus Eberhard was a German theologian and "popular philosopher". Life and career Eberhard was born at Halberstadt in the Principality of Halberstadt, where his father was a school teacher and the singing master at the church of St. Martin's. He studied theology at the University of Halle, and became tutor to the eldest son of Baron von der Horst, to whose family he was attached for several years. In 1763 he was appointed co-rector of the school of St. Martin's, and second preacher in the hospital church of the Holy Ghost, but he soon resigned these offices and followed his patron to Berlin.
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Johann Franz Buddeus
1667 - 1729 (62 years)
Johann Franz Buddeus or Budde was a German Lutheran theologian and philosopher. Life Johann Franz Buddeus was a descendant of the French scholar Guillaume Budé ; the Huguenot family fled France after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and those who emigrated to Pomerania Germanized their name as Budde, the Latin equivalent of which was Buddeus.
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Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener
1813 - 1891 (78 years)
Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener was a New Testament textual critic and a member of the English New Testament Revision Committee which produced the Revised Version of the Bible. He was prebendary of Exeter, and vicar of Hendon.
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Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe
1808 - 1872 (64 years)
Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe was a pastor of the Lutheran Church, Confesional Lutheran writer, and is often regarded as being a founder of the deaconess movement in Lutheranism and a founding sponsor of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod . From the small town of Neuendettelsau, he sent pastors to North America, Australia, New Guinea, Brazil, and Ukraine. His work for a clear confessional basis within the Bavarian church sometimes led to conflict with the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. His chief concern was that a parish find its life in the eucharist, and from that source evangelism and social ministries would flow.
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Joseph Hergenröther
1824 - 1890 (66 years)
Joseph Hergenröther was a German Church historian and canonist, and the first Cardinal-Prefect of the Vatican Archive. Biography Born in Würzburg, he was the second son of Johann Jacob Hergenröther, professor of medicine in the University of Würzburg. In 1842 Hergenröther completed with notable success his gymnasium course in his native town, and entered the University of Würzburg to take up a two-year course of philosophical studies, to which he added certain branches of theology. His historical tendencies exhibited themselves at this early age in a dramatic poem entitled Papst Gregor VII .
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Thomas Erastus
1524 - 1583 (59 years)
Thomas Erastus was a Swiss physician and Calvinist theologian. He wrote 100 theses in which he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. They were published in 1589, after his death, with the title . His name was later applied to Erastianism.
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Saint Valentine
175 - 273 (98 years)
Saint Valentine was a 3rd-century Roman saint, commemorated in Western Christianity on February 14 and in Eastern Orthodoxy on July 6. From the High Middle Ages, his Saints' Day has been associated with a tradition of courtly love. He is also a patron saint of Terni, epilepsy and beekeepers. Saint Valentine was a clergymaneither a priest or a bishopin the Roman Empire who ministered to persecuted Christians. He was martyred and his body buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14, which has been observed as the Feast of Saint Valentine since at least the eighth century.
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George Foot Moore
1851 - 1931 (80 years)
George Foot Moore was an eminent historian of religion, author, Presbyterian minister, an american scholar of Hebrew scriptures and Judaism, and accomplished teacher. Life Moore was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Rev. William Eves Moore and Harriet Foot Moore. He was educated at private schools, West Chester Academy and Wyer's School, entered Yale College as a junior in 1870, then graduated from Yale in 1872, as a Phi Beta Kappa and member of the Skull and Bones society. After teaching at Hopkins Grammar School from 1872 to 1873, he engaged in study and private teaching in Columbus, Ohio, 1873–74, then served as principal of Lancaster High School 1874-75.
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Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya
1292 - 1350 (58 years)
Shams ad-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ayyūb az-Zurʿī d-Dimashqī l-Ḥanbalī , commonly known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya or Ibn al-Qayyim for short, or reverentially as Imam Ibn al-Qayyim in Sunni tradition, was an important medieval Islamic jurisconsult, theologian, and spiritual writer. Belonging to the Hanbali school of orthodox Sunni jurisprudence, of which he is regarded as "one of the most important thinkers," Ibn al-Qayyim was also the foremost disciple and student of Ibn Taymiyyah, with whom he was imprisoned in 1326 for dissenting against established tradition during Ib...
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Karl Hase
1800 - 1890 (90 years)
Karl August von Hase was a German Protestant theologian and church historian. Background He was born at Steinbach in Saxony. He studied at Leipzig and Erlangen, and in 1829 was called to Jena as professor of theology. He retired in 1883 and was made a baron. He was the great-grandfather of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
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James Buchanan
1804 - 1870 (66 years)
James Buchanan was a preacher and theological writer. He was born in 1804 at Paisley, and studied at the university of Glasgow. In 1827 he was ordained Church of Scotland minister of Roslin, near Edinburgh, and in 1828 he was translated to the large and important charge of North Leith. In this charge he attained great fame as a preacher, being remarkable or a clear, vigorous, and flowing style, a graceful manner, a vein of thrilling tenderness, broken from time to time by passionate appeals, all in the most pronounced evangelic strain. In 1840 Buchanan was translated to the High Church , Edinburgh, and in 1843, after the disruption, he became first minister of St.
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Theodosius Harnack
1817 - 1889 (72 years)
Theodosius Andreas Harnack was a Baltic German theologian. A professor of Divinity, he started his career as a Privatdozent for church history and homiletics at the University of Dorpat in 1843, he was further appointed university preacher in 1847. Since 1848 he held an ordinary chair as professor for practical and systematic theology. Between 1853 and 1866 Harnack was professor at Frederick Alexander University in Erlangen, Bavaria, German Confederation .
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Donald Barnhouse
1895 - 1960 (65 years)
Donald Grey Barnhouse , was an American Christian preacher, pastor, theologian, radio pioneer, and writer. He was pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1927 to his death in 1960. As a pioneer in radio broadcasting, his program, The Bible Study Hour, continues today and is now known as Dr. Barnhouse & the Bible.
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Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer
1766 - 1848 (82 years)
Friedrich Philipp Immanuel Niethammer , later Ritter von Niethammer, was a German theologian, philosopher and Lutheran educational reformer. Biography He received instruction at the Maulbronn monastery, and in 1784 became a student at Tübinger Stift, where he met Friedrich Hölderlin , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling . In 1790 he moved to Jena, where he studied Kantian philosophy under Karl Leonhard Reinhold . Subsequently, he became an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Jena, where he remained until 1804. In 1806, he was Protestant Ober...
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Horace Bushnell
1802 - 1876 (74 years)
Horace Bushnell was an American Congregational minister and theologian. Life Bushnell was born in the village of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut. He attended Yale College where he roomed with future magazinist Nathaniel Parker Willis. Willis credited Bushnell with teaching him the proper technique for sharpening a razor. After graduating in 1827, he was literary editor of the New York Journal of Commerce from 1828–1829, and in 1829 became a tutor at Yale. Here he initially studied law, but in 1831 he entered the theology department of Yale College. In May, 1833 Bushnell was ordained pastor of the North Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut.
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Bernhard Lichtenberg
1875 - 1943 (68 years)
Bernhard Lichtenberg was a German Catholic priest who became known for repeatedly speaking out, after the rise of Adolf Hitler and during the Holocaust, against the persecution and deportation of the Jews. After serving a jail sentence, he died in the custody of the Gestapo on his way to Dachau concentration camp. Raul Hilberg wrote: "Thus a solitary figure had made his singular gesture. In the buzz of rumormongers and sensation seekers, Bernhard Lichtenberg fought almost alone."
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Oswald von Nell-Breuning
1890 - 1991 (101 years)
Oswald von Nell-Breuning was a Roman Catholic theologian and sociologist. Born in Trier, Germany into an aristocratic family, Nell-Breuning was ordained in 1921 and appointed Professor of Ethics at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in 1928. He was instrumental in the drafting of Pope Pius XI's social encyclical Quadragesimo anno , which – like the earlier Rerum novarum , after which it was named – dealt with the "Social Question" and developed the principle of subsidiarity. Nell-Breuning was not allowed to publish from 1936 to the end of Nazi Germany in 1945. After...
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Senshō Murakami
1851 - 1929 (78 years)
Senshō Murakami was a Meiji period Buddhist scholar and Jodo Shinshu priest. He famously introduced Western scholarship on Buddhism for Japan, and because of this was forced to resign from Japanese Buddhist priesthood. However, ten years later he was reinstated into the priesthood. He belonged to the Ōtani-ha branch of Shin Buddhism.
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Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim
1701 - 1790 (89 years)
Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim was a German historian and theologian. He is remembered as Febronius, the pseudonym under which he wrote his 1763 treatise On the State of the Church and the Legitimate Power of the Roman Pontiff and which gave rise to febronianism.
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Johannes Pinsk
1891 - 1957 (66 years)
Johannes Pinsk was a German Catholic theologian and professor. Pinsk studied theology in Breslau and was ordained priest 13th Juni 1915. In 1923 he got his doctorate in theology. In 1928 he moved to Berlin, where he was busy in the area of pastoral care and spiritual guidance of academics. From 1939 to 1954 he led the parish Mater Dolorosa in Berlin-Lankwitz. After that he became professor at the Free University of Berlin. He wrote hundreds of articles, and several dozen books.
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Karl Immanuel Nitzsch
1787 - 1868 (81 years)
Karl Immanuel Nitzsch was a German Lutheran church leader. He was the father of theologian Friedrich August Nitzsch. Biography He was born in the small Saxon town of Borna near Leipzig. His father, Karl Ludwig Nitzsch, at that time pastor and superintendent in Borna, later became professor at Wittenberg and director of the seminary for preachers. He was sent to study at Schulpforta in 1803, going on to the University of Wittenberg in 1806. In 1809 he graduated, and in 1810 he became a privatdozent at the university. Having become a deacon at the Schlosskirche in 1811, he showed remarkable energy and zeal during the bombardment and siege of the city in 1813.
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James Freeman Clarke
1810 - 1888 (78 years)
James Freeman Clarke was an American minister, theologian and author. Biography Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on April 4, 1810, James Freeman Clarke was the son of Samuel Clarke and Rebecca Parker Hull, though he was raised by his grandfather James Freeman, minister at King's Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended the Boston Latin School, and later graduated from Harvard College in 1829, and Harvard Divinity School in 1833.
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Ferdinand Hitzig
1807 - 1875 (68 years)
Ferdinand Hitzig was a German biblical critic. Life and works Hitzig was born at Hauingen , Baden, where his father was a pastor. He studied theology at Heidelberg under H.E.G. Paulus, at Halle under Wilhelm Gesenius and at Göttingen under Ewald. Returning to Heidelberg he became Privatdozent in theology in 1829, and in 1831 published his Begriff der Kritik am Alten Testamente praktisch erörtert, a study of Old Testament criticism in which he explained the critical principles of the grammatico-historical school, and his Des Propheten Jonas Orakel über Moab, an exposition of the 5th and 16th chapters of the Book of Isaiah attributed by him to the prophet Jonah mentioned in 2 Kings xiv.
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Johann Peter Lange
1802 - 1884 (82 years)
Johann Peter Lange , was a German Calvinist theologian of peasant origin. Biography He was born at Sonnborn near Elberfeld, and studied theology at Bonn under K. I. Nitzsch and G. C. F. Lücke, held several pastorates, and eventually settled at Bonn as professor of theology in succession to Isaac August Dorner, becoming also in 1860 counsellor to the Coblence Consistory of the old-Prussian Rhenish Ecclesiastical Province.
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Jean-Joseph Gaume
1802 - 1879 (77 years)
Jean-Joseph Gaume was a French Roman Catholic theologian and author. Life Gaume was born at Fuans, Franche-Comté. While attached to the Diocese of Nevers, he was successively professor of theology, director of the petit séminaire, canon, and vicar-general of the diocese, and had already published several works, when he left for Rome in 1841.
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Carl Paul Caspari
1814 - 1892 (78 years)
Carl Paul Caspari was a Norwegian neo-Lutheran theologian and academic. He was a Professor of Old Testament Theology at the University of Oslo. He wrote several books and is best known for his interpretations and translation of the Old Testament.
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Walter Grundmann
1906 - 1976 (70 years)
Walter Grundmann was a German Protestant theologian and antisemitic Nazi and Stasi collaborateur during the Third Reich and GDR. Grundmann served both German dictatorships. He was a member of the Nazi party from 1930 onwards, and from 1933 onwards an active member of the German Christians and prospered as a state-antisemitism supporting theologian and professor for ethnic theology. In 1939, he was made head of the newly founded Instituts zur Erforschung jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben in Jena, which was meant to serve state antisemitism by the "Entjudung" of the Bible and giving antisemitic theological training and arguments for Nazi propaganda.
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Conrad Vorstius
1569 - 1622 (53 years)
Conrad Vorstius was a German-Dutch heterodox Remonstrant theologian, and successor to Jacobus Arminius in the theology chair at Leiden University. His appointment, and the controversy surrounding it, became an international matter in the political and religious affairs of the United Provinces during the Twelve Years' Truce, supplying a pretext for the irregular intervention of King James I of England in those affairs. Vorstius published theological views which were taken to show sympathy with the Socinians, and was declared a heretic at the Synod of Dort in 1619.
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Gabriel Biel
1418 - 1495 (77 years)
Gabriel Biel was a German scholastic philosopher and member of the Canons Regular of the Congregation of Windesheim, who were the clerical counterpart to the Brethren of the Common Life. Biel was born in Speyer and died in Einsiedel near Tübingen. In 1432 he was ordained to the priesthood and entered Heidelberg University to obtain a baccalaureate. He succeeded academically and became an instructor in the faculty of the arts for three years, until he pursued a higher degree at the University of Erfurt. His first stay was brief, lasting only until he transferred to the University of Cologne. He did not complete his degree there either, and would return to Erfurt in 1451 to finish.
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Abu Hasan al-Ash'ari
873 - 935 (62 years)
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī , often reverently referred to as Imām al-Ashʿarī by Sunnī Muslims, was a Muslim scholar of Shafi jurisprudence, scriptural exegete, reformer , and scholastic theologian , renowned for being the eponymous founder of the Ashʿarite school of Islamic theology.
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Gisle Johnson
1822 - 1894 (72 years)
Gisle Christian Johnson was a leading 19th-century Norwegian theologian and educator. Biography Gisle Christian Johnson was born at Fredrikshald in Østfold, Norway. He grew up at Kristiansand in Vest-Agder. He was a son of engineer and architect Georg Daniel Barth Johnson . He studied theology at the University of Christiania and graduated in 1845. In 1849 he became a lecturer at the University of Christiania, and in 1860 a professor, first in systematic theology and Dogmatic theology and from 1875 in church history.
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Mary MacKillop
1842 - 1909 (67 years)
Mary Helen MacKillop RSJ, religious name Mary of the Cross, was an Australian religious sister of Scottish descent who has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church. She was born in Melbourne but is best known for her activities in South Australia. Together with Julian Tenison-Woods, she founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart , a congregation of religious sisterss that established a number of schools and welfare institutions throughout Australia and New Zealand, with an emphasis on education for the rural poor.
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Daniel Schenkel
1813 - 1885 (72 years)
Daniel Schenkel was a Swiss Protestant theologian. Biography Schenkel was born at Dägerlen in the canton of Zürich. After studying at Basel and Göttingen, he was successively pastor at Schaffhausen , professor of theology at Basel ; and at Heidelberg professor of theology , director of the seminary and university preacher. At first inclined to conservatism, he afterwards became an exponent of the mediating theology , and ultimately a liberal theologian and advanced critic.
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Eugène Ménégoz
1838 - 1921 (83 years)
Eugène Ménégoz was a French Lutheran theologian who was a native of Algolsheim, Haut-Rhin. He studied theology in Strasbourg, and in 1866 became pastor at the parish of Billettes in Paris. In 1877 he was appointed full professor to the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris. With Louis Auguste Sabatier , he was originator of the French "Symbolo-Fideism" movement, a theological concept that was a union of symbolism and fideism. In his lectures and writings Ménégoz stressed that salvation was achieved through the act of faith independent of creed. A few of his more important publications were...
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Joseph Franz von Allioli
1793 - 1873 (80 years)
Joseph Franz von Allioli , was a Roman Catholic theologian and orientalist. Allioli studied theology at Landshut and was ordained at Ratisbon in 1816. From 1818 to 1820, he studied Oriental languages at Vienna, Rome, and Paris.
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Judah Loew ben Bezalel
1512 - 1609 (97 years)
Judah Loew ben Bezalel , also known as Rabbi Loew , the Maharal of Prague , or simply the Maharal , was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who, for most of his life, served as a leading rabbi in the cities of Mikulov in Moravia and Prague in Bohemia.
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Alexander Balmain Bruce
1831 - 1899 (68 years)
Alexander Balmain Bruce was a Scottish churchman and theologian. He was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. Life He was born at Aberdalgie in the parish of Abernethy, Perthshire, on 13 January 1831, was the son of David Bruce, a farmer. His elder brother was the Presbyterian minister David Bruce. He was educated at Auchterarder parish school.
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Hermann Cremer
1834 - 1903 (69 years)
August Hermann Cremer was a German Protestant theologian. He was considered head of the so-called Greifswalder Schule at the University of Greifswald. He studied theology in Halle under Friedrich August Tholuck and at Tübingen as a pupil of Johann Tobias Beck. From 1859 he served as pastor in Ostönnen , and in 1870 was appointed professor of systematic theology at the University of Greifswald.
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Johann Martin Augustin Scholz
1794 - 1852 (58 years)
Johann Martin Augustin Scholz was a German Roman Catholic orientalist, biblical scholar and academic theologian. He was a professor at the University of Bonn and travelled extensively throughout Europe and the Near East in order to locate manuscripts of the New Testament.
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Andrea Carlo Ferrari
1850 - 1921 (71 years)
Andrea Ferrari – later adopting the middle name "Carlo" – was an Italian Catholic prelate who served as a cardinal and as the Archbishop of Milan from 1894 until his death. Ferrari was a well-regarded pastor and theologian who led two dioceses before being appointed to the prestigious Milanese archdiocese which he led until his death. But he was later accused of Modernism which led to a strained relationship with Pope Pius X who finally reconciled with Ferrari in 1912.
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Edgar S. Brightman
1884 - 1953 (69 years)
Edgar Sheffield Brightman was an American philosopher and Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and liberal theology, and promulgated the philosophy known as Boston personalism.
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Nathan Bangs
1778 - 1862 (84 years)
Nathan Bangs was an American Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition and influential leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church prior to the 1860s. Born in Stratford, Connecticut, he received a limited education, taught school, and in 1799 went to Upper Canada in search of work as either a teacher or a land-surveyor. He was converted to Methodism in 1800 and worked for eight years as an itinerant preacher in the wilderness of the Canadian provinces, serving communities in the areas of Kingston, York, London, Niagara, and Montreal. Of particular note is his responsibility for organizing the first camp meeting in Upper Canada in the fall of 1805.
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