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,
#4301
S. G. F. Brandon
1907 - 1971 (64 years)
Samuel George Frederick Brandon was a British Anglican priest and scholar of comparative religion. He became professor of comparative religion at the University of Manchester in 1951. Biography Born in Devon in 1907, Brandon was a graduate of the University of Leeds. He was ordained as a priest in 1932 after Anglican training at Mirfield, and then spent seven years as a parish priest before enrolling as an army chaplain in the Second World War, after which he began a successful academic career in 1951 as an historian of religion. Brandon's most influential work, Jesus and the Zealots, was pub...
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Joseph Lortz
1887 - 1975 (88 years)
Joseph Lortz was a Roman Catholic church historian. He was a highly regarded Reformation historian and ecumenist. Beginning in the 1940s, Lortz made his ecumenical views available to general readers as well as to scholars in order to promote reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants. His writings played a role in the thinking that manifested itself in the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio . What was not widely known, however, was Lortz's involvement with Nazism from 1933 until 1937. His Geschichte der Kirche portrayed the church of the 1800s and th...
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William Elliot Griffis
1843 - 1928 (85 years)
William Elliot Griffis was an American orientalist, Congregational minister, lecturer, and prolific author. Early life Griffis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of a sea captain and later a coal trader. During the American Civil War, he served two months as a corporal in Company H of the 44th Pennsylvania Militia after Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania in 1863. After the war, he attended Rutgers University at New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating in 1869. At Rutgers, Griffis was an English and Latin language tutor for Kusakabe Tarō, a young samurai from the province of Echize...
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Ernst Sellin
1867 - 1946 (79 years)
Ernst Sellin was a German Protestant theologian. Sellin studied theology and oriental languages. During 1897–1908 he taught at the Protestant faculty of theology in Vienna, during 1908–1913 at the University of Rostock, during 1913–1921 in Kiel and in 1921–1935 in Berlin.
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Charles Ellicott
1819 - 1905 (86 years)
Charles John Ellicott was a distinguished English Christian theologian, academic and churchman. He briefly served as Dean of Exeter, then Bishop of the united see of Gloucester and Bristol. Early life and family Ellicott was born in Whitwell, Rutland on 25 April 1819. He was educated at Stamford School and St John's College, Cambridge.
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Edward Welchman
1665 - 1739 (74 years)
Edward Welchman was an English churchman, known as a theological writer. He was Archdeacon of Cardigan from 1727. Life The son of John Welchman, of Banbury, Oxfordshire, he was born in 1665. He matriculated as a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 7 July 1679. He was one of the choristers of Magdalen College in that university from 1679 till 1682. He proceeded B.A. on 24 April 1683, was admitted a probationer fellow of Merton College in 1684, and commenced M.A. on 19 June 1688.
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Heinrich Joseph Wetzer
1801 - 1853 (52 years)
Heinrich Joseph Wetzer was a German Orientalist. His greatest achievement was the part he took in the production of the first edition of the Kirchenlexikon for which he drew up the Nomenclator and which he edited with Benedict Welte.
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George of Laodicea
320 - 361 (41 years)
George was the bishop of Laodicea in Syria from 335 until his deposition in 347. He took part in the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century. At first an ardent admirer of the teaching of Arius and associated with Eusebius of Nicomedia, he subsequently became a semi-Arian, but seems ultimately to have united with the Anomoeans, whose uncompromising opponent he had once been, and to have died professing their tenets.
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John Cotton
1585 - 1652 (67 years)
John Cotton was a clergyman in England and the American colonies, and was considered the preeminent minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He studied for five years at Trinity College, Cambridge, and nine years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He had already built a reputation as a scholar and outstanding preacher when he accepted the position of minister at St. Botolph's Church, Boston, in Lincolnshire, in 1612.
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Friedrich Adolf Krummacher
1767 - 1845 (78 years)
Friedrich Adolf Krummacher was a German Reformed theologian and a writer of devotional poetry and prose. Biography He was born in Tecklenburg, Westphalia. Having studied theology at Lingen and Halle, he became successively rector of the grammar school at Moers , a professor of theology at the University of Duisburg , a preacher in Kettwig , Consistorialrath and superintendent in Bernburg , and, after declining an invitation to the University of Bonn, pastor of the Ansgariuskirche in Bremen . He died in Bremen.
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Ethelbert Stauffer
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Ethelbert Stauffer was a German Protestant theologian and numismatist. Life Stauffer was the son of a Mennonite preacher born and raised in Worms. After attending the local grammar school, he studied Protestant theology at the universities of Halle, Berlin and Tübingen from 1921 to 1925. He then entered the service of the Mennonite churches in Hamburg and Altona. He converted to the Evangelical Church in 1928, and became assistant pastor of the Provincial-Saxon church. The New Testament scholar Ernst von Dobschütz appointed him the faculty assistant in Halle, where he graduated in 1929. He be...
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Louis Eugène Marie Bautain
1796 - 1867 (71 years)
Louis Eugène Marie Bautain , was a French philosopher and theologian. Life Bautain was born at Paris. At the École Normale he came under the influence of Victor Cousin. In 1816 he adopted the profession of higher teaching, and was soon after called to the chair of philosophy in the University of Strasbourg. He held this position for many years, and gave a parallel course of lectures as professor of the literary faculty in the same city. The reaction against speculative philosophy, which carried away De Maistre and Lamennais, influenced him also.
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Johann Heinrich Hottinger
1620 - 1667 (47 years)
Johann Heinrich Hottinger was a Swiss philologist and theologian. Life and works Hottinger studied at Geneva, Groningen and Leiden. After visiting France and England he was appointed professor of church history in his native town of Zürich in 1642. The chair of Hebrew at the Carolinum in Zürich was added in 1643, and in 1653 he was appointed professor ordinarius of logic, rhetoric and theology.
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J. Stuart Russell
1816 - 1895 (79 years)
James Stuart Russell M.A., D.Div., was a Christian pastor and author of The Parousia. The book was originally published in 1878 under title The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord's Second Coming with a second edition published in 1887.
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Francis Ellingwood Abbot
1836 - 1903 (67 years)
Francis Ellingwood Abbot was an American philosopher and theologian who sought to reconstruct theology in accord with scientific method. His lifelong romance with his wife Katharine Fearing Loring forms the subject of If Ever Two Were One, a collection of his correspondence and diary entries.
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T. C. Chao
1888 - 1979 (91 years)
Tzu-ch'en Chao , also known as T. C. Chao, was one of the leading Protestant theological thinkers in China in the early twentieth century. Life Chao was born on February 14, 1888, in Xinshi, Deqing County, Zhejiang, China. In 1903, at the age of fifteen, he chose to pursue a Western-style education, and enrolled in a secondary school affiliated with Soochow University. He was admitted to the university a few years later.
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E. Stanley Jones
1884 - 1973 (89 years)
Eli Stanley Jones was an American Methodist Christian missionary, theologian, and author. He is remembered for his interreligious lectures to the educated classes in India. His seminal work, The Christ of the Indian Road , sold more than a million copies worldwide after its publication in 1925. As of 2018, three million copies of his books have been sold. He is the founder of the Christian ashram movement. In 1938, Time called Jones "the world's greatest Christian missionary."
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Benajah Harvey Carroll
1843 - 1914 (71 years)
Benajah Harvey Carroll, known as B. H. Carroll , was a Baptist pastor, theologian, teacher, and author. Biography Carroll was born near Carrollton in Carroll County in north central Mississippi, one of twelve children to Benajah Carroll and the former Mary Eliza Mallard. His father was a Baptist minister. The family moved to Burleson County, Texas in 1858.
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Amleto Giovanni Cicognani
1883 - 1973 (90 years)
Amleto Giovanni Cicognani was an Italian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Vatican Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969, and Dean of the College of Cardinals from 1972 until his death. Cicognani was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958. His brother, Gaetano Cicognani, was also a cardinal. To date they are the last pair of brothers to serve together in the College of Cardinals.
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Donald Maclean
1869 - 1943 (74 years)
Donald Maclean was principal of the Free Church College in Edinburgh. He was appointed Professor of Church History and Church Principles in 1920, and principal in 1942, but died the following year. He also co-founded The Evangelical Quarterly.
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Absalon
1128 - 1201 (73 years)
Absalon was a Danish statesman and prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the bishop of Roskilde from 1158 to 1192 and archbishop of Lund from 1178 until his death. He was the foremost politician and church father of Denmark in the second half of the 12th century, and was the closest advisor of King Valdemar I of Denmark. He was a key figure in the Danish policies of territorial expansion in the Baltic Sea, Europeanization in close relationship with the Holy See, and reform in the relation between the Church and the public. He combined the ideals of Gregorian Reform with loyal support o...
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John McMurtrie
1831 - 1912 (81 years)
John McMurtrie FRSE was a Scottish minister and naturalist. He served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1904. As a naturalist he had a special interest in conches. Life He was born on 16 December 1831 in Ayr the son of Agnes Tweedie Nichol and her husband, John McMurtrie a bank agent . He was educated at Ayr Academy. He then studied divinity at the University of Edinburgh graduating BA in 1854 with an MA in 1856.
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Andreas Steinhuber
1825 - 1907 (82 years)
Andreas Steinhuber, S.J. was a German prelate of the Catholic Church who worked in education as a teacher and administrator, was made a cardinal in 1893, and then held senior positions in the Roman Curia. He was a forceful opponent of modernism in the Catholic Church and in wider society.
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Isaac Barrow
1630 - 1677 (47 years)
Isaac Barrow was an English Christian theologian and mathematician who is generally given credit for his early role in the development of infinitesimal calculus; in particular, for proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus. His work centered on the properties of the tangent; Barrow was the first to calculate the tangents of the kappa curve. He is also notable for being the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton.
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Wilhelm Gass
1813 - 1889 (76 years)
Wilhelm Gass was a German theologian born in Breslau. He was the son of theologian Joachim Christian Gass . He received his education in Breslau, Halle and Berlin, and as a student was influenced by the teachings of August Neander . In 1846 he became an associate professor at the University of Breslau, and during the following year relocated to Greifswald, where in 1855 he achieved the title of professor ordinarius. In 1862 he was appointed professor of systematic theology at the University of Giessen, and in 1868 moved to Heidelberg as a successor to Richard Rothe . He died in 1889 in Heidel...
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Henry Eyster Jacobs
1844 - 1932 (88 years)
Henry Eyster Jacobs was an American religious educator, Biblical commentator and Lutheran theologian. Biography Jacobs was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the son of professor Michael and Juliana M Jacobs. His sister Julia Jacobs Harpster became a missionary in India; his brother Michael William Jacobs became a judge. He graduated from Pennsylvania College in 1862 and from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1865. Between 1870 and 1883, he was professor at Pennsylvania College. He was then appointed professor of systematic theology in The Lutheran Theological Seminary in Mount Airy, where he also assumed the office of dean in 1894.
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Heinrich Abeken
1809 - 1872 (63 years)
Heinrich Abeken was a German theologian and Prussiann Privy Legation Councillor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin. Early life Abeken was born and raised in the city of Osnabrück as a son of a merchant, he was incited to a higher education by the example of his uncle Bernhard Rudolf Abeken. After finishing the college in Osnabrück, he moved in 1827 to visit the University of Berlin to study theology. He combined philosophical and philological studies and was interested in art and modern literature.
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William Griffith Thomas
1861 - 1924 (63 years)
William Henry Griffith Thomas was an Anglican cleric and scholar from the English-Welsh border country. He has been quoted by theologian Alister McGrath in the science-versus-religion debate. Life and work Griffith Thomas was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, England, to a Welsh family. According to the General Register Office marriage record for his parents, his mother was the daughter of William Griffith, a surgeon of Oswestry. She married William Thomas on August 30, 1860. William Thomas was a draper and the son of Thomas Thomas, a farmer. By the 1861 census, Mrs. Thomas was widowed and living in Oswestry with her parents and infant son.
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Henry Orton Wiley
1877 - 1961 (84 years)
Henry Orton Wiley was a Christian theologian primarily associated with the followers of John Wesley who are part of the Holiness movement. A member of the Church of the Nazarene, his "magnum opus" was the three volume systematic theology Christian Theology.
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Carl Stange
1870 - 1959 (89 years)
Carl Stange was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. In his work, he mainly dealt with issues of ethics and the philosophy of religion. He studied theology, history and philosophy at the universities of Halle, Göttingen, Leipzig and Jena, obtaining his habilitation for systematic theology in 1895 at Halle. In 1903 he became an associate professor at the University of Königsberg, and during the following year, was named a full professor of systematic theology at the University of Greifswald, where in 1911/12 he served as university rector. In 1912 he was appointed professor of syste...
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Johann Wilhelm Petersen
1649 - 1727 (78 years)
Johann Wilhelm Petersen was a German theologian, mystic, and Millennialist. Johann Wilhelm Petersen grew up in Lübeck and studied theology at the Katharineum in Lübeck, as well as in Giessen, Rostock, Leipzig, Wittenberg and Jena. He studied with Philipp Jakob Spener in Frankfurt, and they became friends in 1675. Through his affiliation with Spener, Petersen became interested in Pietism.
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John Baillie
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
John Baillie was a Scottish theologian, a Church of Scotland minister and brother of theologian Donald Macpherson Baillie. Life Son of Free Church minister John Baillie , and his wife, Annie MacPherson, he was born in the Free Church manse in Gairloch, Wester Ross, on 26 March 1886.
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Sibrandus Lubbertus
1556 - 1625 (69 years)
Sibrandus Lubbertus was a Dutch Calvinist theologian and was a professor of theology at the University of Franeker for forty years from the institute's foundation in 1585. He was a prominent participant in the Synod of Dort . His primary works were to counter Roman Catholic doctrine and to oppose Socinianism and Arminianism.
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Johann Georg Rosenmüller
1736 - 1815 (79 years)
Johann Georg Rosenmüller , a German Protestant theologian, was born at Ummerstadt in Hildburghausen, on 18 December 1736. He was appointed Professor of Theology at Erlangen in 1773, Primarius Professor of Theology at Erlangen in 1773, Primarius Professor of Divinity at Giessen in 1783, and was called in 1785 to Leipzig, where he remained until his death in 1815. His two sons were Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller, and Johann Christian Rosenmüller.
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James Robinson Graves
1820 - 1893 (73 years)
James Robinson Graves was an American Baptist preacher, publisher, evangelist, debater, author, and editor. He is most noted as the original founder of what is now the Southwestern family of companies. Graves was born in Chester, Vermont, the son of Z. C. Graves, and died in Memphis, Tennessee. His remains are interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.
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Johann Joachim Lange
1670 - 1744 (74 years)
Johann Joachim Lange was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. Lange was born in Gardelegen and educated in Leipzig, Erfurt and Halle. He was influenced by Christian Thomasius and the pietist August Hermann Francke. He became a professor of theology at Halle in 1709, and opposed the philosophy of Christian Wolff. He died in Halle on 7 May 1744.
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Caspar Schwenckfeld
1489 - 1561 (72 years)
Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig was a German theologian, writer, physician, naturalist, and preacher who became a Protestant Reformer and spiritualist. He was one of the earliest promoters of the Protestant Reformation in Silesia.
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Bruno Franz Leopold Liebermann
1759 - 1844 (85 years)
Bruno Franz Leopold Liebermann was a German Catholic theologian. Life Having finished his humanities in the college at Molsheim, he studied theology from 1776 to 1780 in the seminary at Strasbourg, after which, as he was too young for ordination, he was as subdeacon appointed teacher in the college at Molsheim. He became a deacon and a licentiate of theology in 1782, and was ordained priest on 14 June 1783.
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Philipp van Limborch
1633 - 1712 (79 years)
Philipp van Limborch was a Dutch Remonstrant theologian. Biography Limborch was born on 19 June 1633 in Amsterdam, where his father was a lawyer. He received his education at Utrecht, at Leiden, in his native city, and finally at Utrecht University, which he entered in 1652. In 1657 he became a Remonstrant pastor at Gouda, and in 1667 he was transferred to Amsterdam, where, in the following year, the office of professor of theology in the Remonstrant seminary was added to his pastoral charge. He was a friend of John Locke, whose A Letter Concerning Toleration was likely addressed to, and first published by, Philipp van Limborch.
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George Park Fisher
1827 - 1909 (82 years)
George Park Fisher was an American theologian and historian who was noted as a teacher and a prolific writer. Biography He was born in Wrentham, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University in 1847, and then studied theology at Yale Divinity School and the Andover Theological Seminary. He graduated from the latter institution in 1851. In 1853 he visited Germany, where he continued his theological studies.
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August Carl Eduard Baldamus
1812 - 1893 (81 years)
August Carl Eduard Baldamus was a German ornithologist. August Baldamus studied theology at the University of Berlin. In 1859 he became professor at the Gymnasium in Köthen where he met Carl Andreas Naumann and his brother Johann Friedrich Naumann both ornithologists. In 1849 he became Pastor in Diebzig, in 1859 moving to the same office in Osternienburg. He retired to Coburg in 1870. Baldamus was the founder of the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft and published the ornithological journal Naumannia between 1849 and 1858.
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Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch
1725 - 1778 (53 years)
Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch was a German theologian, linguist, and naturalist from Jena. Life The son of the theologian Johann Georg Walch, he studied Semitic languages at the University of Jena, and also natural science and mathematics. In 1749 he published Einleitung in die Harmonie der Evangelien, and in 1750 was appointed professor extraordinarius of theology. Five years later he became professor ordinarius of logic and metaphysics; in 1759 he exchanged this for a professorship of rhetoric and poetry.
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Henry Alford
1810 - 1871 (61 years)
Henry Alford was an English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer. Life Alford was born in London, of a Somerset family, which had given five consecutive generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford's early years were passed with his widowed father, who was curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was a precocious boy, and before he was ten had written several Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic outlines. After a peripatetic school education he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1827 as a scholar. In 1832 he was 3...
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Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec
1501 - 1584 (83 years)
Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec, also known as Hieronymus Bolsec was a French Carmelite theologian and physician, who became a Protestant and controversialist, later returning to the Catholic Church. Life A sermon which he preached at Paris aroused misgivings in Catholic circles regarding the soundness of his ideas, and Bolsec left Paris. Having separated from the Catholic Church around 1545, he took refuge at the Court of Renée, duchess of Ferrara, who was favourably disposed towards persons holding Protestant views. Here he married, and began the study of medicine around 1550, settling as a physician ...
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Siger of Brabant
1235 - 1284 (49 years)
Siger of Brabant was a 13th-century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism. Life Early life Little is known about many of the details of his life. In 1266, he was attached to the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris at the time when a riot erupted between the French and Picard "nations" of students—a series of loosely organized fraternities. The papal legate threatened Siger with execution as the ringleader of the Picard attack on the French, but no further action was taken.
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Cuthbert
635 - 687 (52 years)
Cuthbert of Lindisfarne was an Anglo-Saxon saint of the early Northumbrian church in the Celtic tradition. He was a monk, bishop and hermit, associated with the monasteries of Melrose and Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of Northumbria, today in north-eastern England and south-eastern Scotland. Both during his life and after his death, he became a popular medieval saint of Northern England, with a cult centred on his tomb at Durham Cathedral. Cuthbert is regarded as the patron saint of Northumbria. His feast days are 20 March and 4 September .
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Saint Remigius
437 - 533 (96 years)
Remigius was the Bishop of Reims and "Apostle of the Franks". On 25 December 496, he baptised Clovis I, King of the Franks. The baptism, leading to about 3000 additional converts, was an important event in the Christianization of the Franks. Because of Clovis's efforts, a large number of churches were established in the formerly pagan lands of the Frankish empire, establishing a distinct Catholic variety of Christianity for the first time in Germanic lands, most of whom had been converted to Arian Christianity.
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Franz Joseph Dölger
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Franz Joseph Dölger was a German Catholic theologian and church historian. He studied theology at the University of Würzburg, being ordained into the priesthood in 1902. Afterwards he worked as a chaplain in Amorbach and Würzburg, and in June 1904, obtained his doctorate in theology.
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Orson Hyde
1805 - 1878 (73 years)
Orson Hyde was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement and a member of the first Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He was the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 to 1875 and was a missionary of the LDS Church in the United States, Europe, and the Ottoman Empire.
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Willibald Beyschlag
1823 - 1900 (77 years)
Johann Heinrich Christoph Willibald Beyschlag was a German theologian from Frankfurt am Main. Biography He studied theology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, afterwards serving as an assistant pastor in Koblenz , then as a pastor in Trier . During the following year, Beyschlag began working as a religious instructor in Mainz. In 1856 he became a court preacher in Karlsruhe, and four years later, he was appointed a professor of practical theology and New Testament exegesis at the University of Halle.
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