The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#3751
Phillip Norreys
1301 - 1401 (100 years)
Phillip Norreys, Irish theologian, fl. 1427-1465. A native of the diocese of Dublin, Ireland, Norreys made a successful career for himself in the church and Oxford University. He was vicar of Dundalk from 1427, and Doctor of Theology at Oxford by 1435. He was later successively canon, prebendary and Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, occupying the latter post by 1457. He also held the post of rector of Trim.
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Franz Oberthür
1745 - 1831 (86 years)
Franz Oberthür was a German Roman Catholic scholar who edited an 18th-century edition of Josephus once owned by Thomas Jefferson. In 1773 he was appointed professor of dogmatics and polemics at the University of Würzburg. He is best known for his efforts involving reform within the church and the education system. In 1806 he founded the Gesellschaft zur Vervollkommung der mechanischen Künste .
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Robert A. Young
1824 - 1902 (78 years)
Robert A. Young was an American minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. A descendant of slaveholding planters, he served as a minister in many churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri in the Antebellum South. He served as the President of Florence Wesleyan University
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Melchior Hittorp
1525 - 1584 (59 years)
Melchior Hittorp was a German Roman Catholic theologian and liturgical writer. His interests included the liturgical forms of early Christianity. Life On the completion of his studies he obtained the degree of Licentiate of Theology, and was appointed Canon at S. Maria ad Gradus. In 1593 he was elected dean of the collegiate church of St. Cunibert.
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Georg Schreiber
1882 - 1963 (81 years)
Georg Schreiber was a German politician and church historian. He spent fifteen years as a student which, even by the standards of Wilhelmine Germany,was exceptional. Following ordination he increasingly combined his student career with chaplaincy work. He nevertheless ended up with an unusually broad university-level education. He held a full "ordinary" professorship at the University of Münster between 1917 and 1935, and again between 1945 and 1951, also serving as University Rector during 1945/46. He served as a Member of Parliament, representing electoral district 19 – later 17 – between...
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Henri-Michel Guedier de Saint-Aubin
1695 - 1741 (46 years)
Henri-Michel Guedier de Saint-Aubin was a French theologian. He was born in Gournay-en-Bray on 17 June 1695. He studied at Paris, and received the doctor's degree from the Sorbonne Oct. 29,1723. He became professor in that institution in 1730, and its librarian in 1736. Some time after he obtained the abbey of St. Vulmer. He was acquainted with Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, English, and Italian, besides history, theology, and kindred sciences. For fourteen years he decided all cases of conscience presented to the Sorbonne. He died in Paris on 27 September 1742.
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Alexander Carson
1776 - 1844 (68 years)
Alexander Carson was an Irish Baptist minister. He was known as an author, pastor-teacher and theologian. Life Carson studied in Glasgow and was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in Tobermore, County Londonderry in 1798. After several years he left the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and published Reasons for Separating from the General Synod of Ulster as justification of his action, where he stated:
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Juan Bautista
1555 - 1700 (145 years)
Juan Bautista was a Mexican Franciscan theologian and writer. Life He joined the Franciscans in his native city, and taught theology and metaphysics at the convent of St. Francis of Mexico. He was also a definitor of the province, and became Guardian of Tezcuco twice , of Tlatelolco , and of Tacuba in 1605.
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Peter of Bergamo
1400 - 1482 (82 years)
Peter of Bergamo also called Peter of Almadura was an Italian Dominican theologian. Life Born in Bergamo in the early 15th century, he entered the Dominican Order in his native town, and completed his studies at the University of Bologna, where he received his degree. In the Dominican House of Studies he filled the offices of Master of Students and Bachelor of the Studium.
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Caspar Wistar Hodge Sr.
1830 - 1891 (61 years)
Caspar Wistar Hodge Sr. was an American theologian. Like his father Charles Hodge, he taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, serving as Professor of New Testament. Hodge studied at the College of New Jersey and Princeton Seminary. He taught at the seminary from 1861 until his death.
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Tehilla Lichtenstein
1893 - 1973 (80 years)
Tehilla Lichtenstein was a cofounder and leader of Jewish Science, as well as an author. She was born in Jerusalem and immigrated to America when she was eleven years old. Her parents were Hava and Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn. She earned a B.A. degree in Classics from Hunter College and an M.A. degree in literature from Columbia University.
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Johann Christian Georg Bodenschatz
1717 - 1797 (80 years)
Johann Christian Georg Bodenschatz , was a German Protestant theologian. Biography Bodenschatz was born at Hof, Germany. In his early education at the gymnasium of Gera he became interested in Oriental and Biblical subjects through his teacher, Schleusner; and later , at the University of Jena, he took up Oriental languages as a special study.
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Vitus Miletus
1549 - 1615 (66 years)
Vitus Miletus was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Life He studied at the German College, Rome, from 1567 to 1575; on 28 October 1573, as dean of the students he gave a short address before Pope Gregory XIII, when he visited the newly organized academy. He was ordained in St. John Lateran on Easter Saturday, 1575, and returned to Germany in the summer of that year; on his way home he was made doctor of theology at Bologna .
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Charles Claude Selecman
1874 - 1958 (84 years)
Charles Claude Selecman was an American Methodist minister and educator. He served as the third President of Southern Methodist University from 1923 to 1938. In 1938, he was elected as an American bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
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Robert Crosse
1606 - 1683 (77 years)
Robert Crosse was an English puritan theologian. Life He was son of William Crosse of Dunster, Somerset. He entered Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1621, obtained a fellowship in 1627, graduated in arts, and in 1637 proceeded B.D. Siding with the presbyterians on the outbreak of the First English Civil War, he was nominated in 1643 one of the Westminster Assembly, and took the Solemn League and Covenant.
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Conrad Koellin
1476 - 1536 (60 years)
Conrad Koellin was a Dominican, professor of theology, and commentator on St. Thomas Aquinas. Life Conrad was born in Ulm in 1476. He entered the Dominican Order in 1492, and professed the following year. During his formative years he reports that he studied Capreolus. He entered the University of Heidelberg in 1500, and in 1507 became a master of theology, and commenced lectures on Thomas Aquinas. It was here that he wrote his line-by-line commentary on the Prima Secundae of Thomas's Summa Theologica. On July 1, 1511, he took the position of master of theology at Cologne. In 1512, at the req...
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George D'Oyly
1778 - 1846 (68 years)
George D'Oyly was an English cleric and academic, theologian and biographer. Life The fourth son of Matthias D'Oyly, archdeacon of Lewes and rector of Buxted, Sussex, he was born 31 October 1778; of his brothers the eldest was Thomas D'Oyly, serjeant-at-law; the second, Sir John D'Oyly; the third, Sir Francis D'Oyly, killed at Waterloo; and the youngest, Major-general Henry D'Oyly. He went to schools at Dorking, Putney, and Kensington, and in 1796 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In 1800 he graduated BA as second wrangler and second Smith's prizeman, and in 1801 gained the member's prize for the Latin essay.
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Johann Hasler
1548 - 1593 (45 years)
Johann Hasler , also known as Haslerus, was a 16th-century Swiss theologian and physician. He is known for his association with a group of antitrinitarians including Johann Sylvan and Adam Neuser and for developing Galen's concept of heat and cold into the idea of a scale of temperature.
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Peter Williams Jr.
1786 - 1840 (54 years)
Peter Williams Jr. was an African-American Episcopal priest, the second ordained in the United States and the first to serve in New York City. He was an abolitionist who also supported free black emigration to Haiti, the black republic that had achieved independence in 1804 in the Caribbean. In the 1820s and 1830s, he strongly opposed the American Colonization Society's efforts to relocate free blacks to the colony of Liberia in West Africa.
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Jan Koopmans
1905 - 1945 (40 years)
Jan Koopmans was a Dutch theologian, best known for his works De Nederlandsche Geloofsbelijdenis and Wat wij wel en wat wij niet geloven .
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Johann Faber of Heilbronn
1504 - 1558 (54 years)
Johann Faber of Heilbronn, also known as Johannes Fabri , was a controversial 16th century Catholic preacher. He was born in Heilbronn. At the age of sixteen he entered the Dominican Order and made his ecclesiastical studies in the convent at Wimpfen. Little is known about his early preaching, but in 1534 he was invited to preach in the cathedral of Augsburg, but owing to the Lutheran tendencies of the time, and the strong anti-Catholic feeling which arose from it, the Catholic clergy were forbidden to preach, and his usefulness in Augsburg was of short duration.
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Muhamed Šefket Kurt
1879 - 1963 (84 years)
Muhamed Šefket Kurt was a Bosnian Imam, theologian and the Mufti of the cities of Banja Luka and Tuzla. He is credited with saving the lives of hundreds of Serbs during World War II. Early life Muhamed Šefket Kurt was born in Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, then a part the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1879 to ethnic Bosniak parents.
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Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves
1800 - 1876 (76 years)
Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves FRSE was a Scottish advocate, judge, theologian and writer. He served as Solicitor General , as a judge of the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland , and as Rector of the University of St Andrews .
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Benedictus Figulus
1567 - 1619 (52 years)
Benedictus Figulus of Utenhofen was a German alchemist, publisher, and Rosicrucian. He was an editor of Paracelsian texts and an important representative of Paracelsianism in the early 17th century.
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Fernão de Oliveira
1507 - 1581 (74 years)
Fernão de Oliveira , sometimes named Fernando de Oliveira or Fernando Oliveira, was a Portuguese grammarian, Dominican friar, historian, cartographer, naval pilot and theorist on naval warfare and shipbuilding. An adventurous humanist and renaissance man, he studied and published the first grammar of the Portuguese language, the Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa, in 1536. He was an early critic of slavery and the slave trade.
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Al-Muhasibi
781 - 857 (76 years)
Al-Muḥāsibī was a Muslim Arab, theologian, philosopher and ascetic. He is considered to be the founder of the Baghdad School of Islamic philosophy which combined Kalam and Sufism, and a teacher of the Sufi masters Junayd al-Baghdadi and Sirri Saqti.
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Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
1404 - 1470 (66 years)
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo was a Spanish churchman, historian and political theorist. A learned Spanish bishop, after studying law at Salamanca for ten years and there graduating as Doctor, he became secretary to John II of Castile, and Henry IV of Castile. They employed him as envoy on various missions, notably to the Holy See apropos of the Council of Basle, whose conciliarist theories he opposed. While on a mission to the Holy Roman Empire, he was addressed in a letter by Nicholas of Cusa setting forth the latter's theory of explicatio Petri, the unfolding of the Church from Peter.
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Thomas Knaggs
1660 - 1709 (49 years)
Thomas Knaggs was a preacher and publisher of sermons. He was born about 1661 somewhere in County Durham, England, and nothing is known of his early life. He was educated at Durham School, and admitted as a sizar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge 1 June 1676. He matriculated in 1677, earned his BA in 1679 and MA in 1683. He had been ordained as a deacon of York in 1681 and was Vicar of Merrington in County Durham from 1682 to 1720. He was afternoon lecturer at All Saints, Newcastle from 1687 to 1697.
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Johannes Magirus the elder
1537 - 1614 (77 years)
Johannes Magirus was a German Lutheran Theologian. Name change His name at birth, like that of his father, was Johannes Koch. The English language equivalent would be "John Cook". At some point he renamed himself "Johannes Magirus", reflecting an enthusiasm for classical culture that was common among many intellectuals of his time and place. Magirus is the Greek word for "cook."
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William Rosenau
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
William Rosenau was a leader of Reform Judaism in the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States. Biography William Rosenau was born in Wolstein, Germany in 1865, the son of Rabbi Nathan and Johanna Rosenau. The family came to the United States and settled in the Philadelphia area when William Rosenau was eleven. In 1876, Rosenau immigrated to the United States.
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Claudianus Mamertus
420 - 470 (50 years)
Claudianus Ecdidius Mamertus was a Gallo-Roman theologian and the younger brother of Saint Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne. Biography Descended probably from one of the leading families of the country, Claudianus Mamertus relinquished his worldly goods and embraced the monastic life. He assisted his brother in the discharge of his functions, and Sidonius Apollinaris describes him as directing the psalm-singing of the chanters, who were formed into groups and chanted alternate verses, whilst the bishop was at the altar celebrating the sacred mysteries. This passage is of importance in the history of liturgical chant.
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Facundus of Hermiane
550 - 570 (20 years)
Facundus of Hermiana was a 6th-century Christian author, and bishop of Hermiana in North Africa. About his career little is known. His place in history is due entirely to the opposition which he offered to the condemnation of the "Three Chapters". At the instance of Theodore Ascidas, and with the ostensible purpose of reuniting to the Church the Acephali, a sect of Monophysites, Justinian was induced to censure the "Three Chapters". By this act certain writings of the fifth-century Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Ibas of Edessa were condemned.
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Lawrence Washington
1602 - 1652 (50 years)
Lawrence Washington was a High Church rector of the Church of England. He was an early ancestor to the Washington family of Virginia, being the paternal great-great-grandfather of U.S. President George Washington.
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Karl Christian Johann Holsten
1825 - 1897 (72 years)
Karl Christian Johann Holsten was a German Protestant theologian. Holsten was born in Güstrow, Mecklenburg. He was educated at Leipzig, Berlin, and Rostock, where in 1852 he became a teacher of religion at the Gymnasium. In 1870 he went to Bern as professor of New Testament studies, moving from there in 1876 to Heidelberg, where he remained until his death.
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Hugh Ripelin of Strasburg
1210 - 1270 (60 years)
Hugh Ripelin of Strasburg was a Dominican theologian from Strasbourg, Alsace. He is now considered to be the author of the Compendium theologiae or Compendium theologicae veritatis. On account of its scope and style, as well as its practical arrangement, it was for 400 years used as a textbook. It may have been the most widely read theological work of the later Middle Ages, in western Europe. In 1232 a sale of land to Hugo von Ripelin, then the paddock prior of the Dominican Predigerkloster in Zürich, is mentioned.
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Siegmund Salfeld
1843 - 1926 (83 years)
Siegmund Salfeld was a German rabbi and writer. He was born at Stadthagen, Schaumburg-Lippe. Having received his degree of Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1870, he became in the same year rabbi of Dessau, Anhalt. In 1880 he was chosen rabbi of Mainz. He collaborated on Meyers Konversations-Lexikon and the Jewish Encyclopedia. He died in Mainz, aged 83.
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Robert of Bridlington
1200 - 1200 (0 years)
Robert of Bridlington was an English clergyman and theologian who was the fourth prior of Bridlington Priory. He held the office during the period from 1147 to 1156, but it is not clear if he died in office or resigned before his death. Besides holding monastic office, he wrote a number of commentaries on biblical books as well as other treatises. Not all of his works have survived to the current day.
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Erich Haupt
1841 - 1910 (69 years)
Karl Friedrich Erich Haupt was a German Lutheran theologian. Biography He was born at Stralsund, and educated at Berlin. He later worked as a schoolteacher in Kolberg and Treptow an der Rega. He was a professor of New Testament exegesis, successively at Kiel , Greifswald , and Halle , where in 1902 he was named university rector.
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August Friedrich Pfeiffer
1748 - 1817 (69 years)
August Friedrich Pfeiffer was a Lutheran theologian of Germany. He was born in Erlangen on 13 January 1748, where he also commenced his academical career in 1769. In 1776 he was professor of Oriental languages and in 1805 was head librarian of the university. He died on 15 July 1817.
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Henry Ramsden Bramley
1833 - 1917 (84 years)
Henry Ramsden Bramley was an English clergyman and hymnologist perhaps best known for his collaborations with the composer Sir John Stainer. Along with earlier 19th-century composers such as William Sandys and John Mason Neale, Bramley and Stainer are credited with fuelling a Victorian revival of Christmas carols with their 1871 publication of Christmas Carols, New and Old, which popularised carols such as "The First Nowell", "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" and "The Holly and the Ivy".
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Felix
781 - 818 (37 years)
Felix was a Christian bishop and theologian. He served as the bishop of Urgell and advocated the christology known as Spanish Adoptionism because it originated in the lands of the former Visigothic Kingdom in Spain. He was condemned for heresy and all his writings were suppressed. They are known today only through quotations contained in the writings of his opponents.
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Thomas of York
1220 - 1260 (40 years)
Thomas of York was an English Franciscan theologian and scholastic philosopher of the thirteenth century. He was associated with the Oxford Franciscan school. He entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1242, and studied at the University of Oxford. He later was the leader of the Franciscan establishment at Cambridge. Along with Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, he was a major critic of the Parisian secular theologian William of Saint-Amour.
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William of Lucca
William of Lucca was an Italian theologian and scholastic philosopher. He taught at Bologna, in the third quarter of the twelfth century. He wrote a commentary on The Divine Names of Pseudo-Dionysius, combining ideas from Gilbert de la Porrée with those of Eriugena. He is also the presumed author of Summa artis dialectice, a textbook of logic, influenced by Abelard.
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Wacker von Wackenfels
1550 - 1619 (69 years)
Johannes Matthaeus Wacker von Wackenfels was an active diplomat, scholar and author, with an avid interest in history and philosophy. A follower of Neostoicism, he sought to resolve the doubts he still had about his conversion to Catholicism, according to STUDIA RUDOLPHINA - Bulletin of the Research Center for Visual Arts and Culture in the Age of Rudolf II. He was born in Konstanz in 1550 in a Lutheran Protestant family and studied in Strasbourg, Geneva and Padua. He was supported and promoted by Johannes Crato von Krafftheim, who put his way into the circle of Renaissance humanism in Northern Europe in Breslau.
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Ulrich of Strasbourg
1220 - 1277 (57 years)
Ulrich of Strasbourg was a German Dominican theologian and scholastic philosopher from Strasbourg, Alsace. A disciple of Albertus Magnus, he is known for his De summo bono, written 1265 to 1272. Works Ulricus de Argentina, De summo bono, I–IV, edited by A. Beccarisi et al., Corpus philosophorum teutonicorum medii aevi I, vols 1–4, Hamburgh, Meiner, 1987-2008.
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Walter of Mortagne
1100 - 1174 (74 years)
Walter of Mortagne was a Scholastic philosopher, and theologian. Mortagne was educated in the schools of Tournai. Between 1136 and 1144 he taught at the School of St Genevieve in Paris. From Paris he went to Laon and was made bishop of that see. His principal works are a treatise on the Holy Trinity and six "Opuscula". Of the "Opuscula" five are published in Lucas d'Achéry's "Spicilegium" and the sixth in P.L. . A logical commentary which is contained in MS. 17813 of the Bibliothèque Nationale and which was published in part by Barthélemy Hauréau in 1892 is also ascribed to him. Finally, the...
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Peter Coffey
1876 - 1943 (67 years)
Peter Coffey was an Irish Roman Catholic priest and neo-scholastic philosopher. Life Coffey was educated at the Meath Diocesan Seminary in Navan, and St Patrick's College, Maynooth . He studied for his doctorate at the University of Louvain, and attended the University of Strasbourg. He was ordained in 1900.
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James Ambrose Dominic Aylward
1813 - 1872 (59 years)
James Ambrose Dominic Aylward OP was an English Catholic theologian and poet. Born at Leeds, Yorkshire, on 4 April 1813, Aylward was educated at the Dominican priory of Hinckley, entered the Order of St Dominic, was ordained priest in 1836, became Provincial in 1850, first Prior of Woodchester in 1854, and provincial a second time in 1866.
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Archibald Arthur
1744 - 1797 (53 years)
Archibald Arthur FRSE was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher. An alumnus of the University of Glasgow, he served as University chaplain from 1774 – 1794, and librarian from 1780 - 1794. Between 1780 and 1794 he worked as an assistant to Professor of Moral Philosophy Thomas Reid, taking on the latter's teaching duties, and succeeding him in 1796.
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Alexandre Vachon
1885 - 1953 (68 years)
Alexandre Vachon was a Canadian Roman Catholic priest who served as the Archbishop of Ottawa and the chancellor of the University of Ottawa from 1940 to 1953.
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