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,
#4401
Peter Payne
1385 - 1456 (71 years)
Peter Payne was an English theologian, diplomat, Lollard and Taborite. The son of a Frenchman by an English wife, he was born at Hough-on-the-Hill near Grantham. He was educated in Oxford, where he adopted Lollard opinions, and had graduated as a master of arts before 6 October 1406, when he was concerned in the irregular proceedings through which a letter declaring the sympathy of the university was addressed to the Bohemian reformers. From 1410 to 1414 Payne was principal of St Edmund Hall, and during these years was engaged in controversy with Thomas Netter of Walden, the Carmelite defende...
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Galvanus de Bettino
1361 - 1384 (23 years)
Galvanus de Bettino was an Italian theologian. He was the first to hold the chair in canon law at Fünfkirchen in Hungary in 1371. Galvanus received his doctorate in canon law at Padua in 1361. He taught there at least for the years 1365-1368. After his appointment at Pécs, he returned to lecture in Bologna in 1374. From 1379 to 1382 her returned to Padua, then finished his career in Bologna until his death, which occurred before 1395.
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Uthred of Boldon
1320 - 1397 (77 years)
Uthred or Uhtred of Boldon was an English Benedictine monk, theologian and writer, born at Boldon, North Durham; he died at Finchale Abbey. Life Uhtred joined the Benedictine community of Durham Abbey about 1332 and was sent to London in 1337. Three years later he entered Durham College, Oxford, a house which the Durham Benedictines had established at Oxford for those of their members who pursued their studies at the University of Oxford. He was graduated there as licentiate in 1352 and as doctor in 1357. During the succeeding ten years, and even previously, he took part in numerous disputations at Oxford University, many of which were directed against members of the mendicant orders.
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John Young
1514 - 1580 (66 years)
John Young was an English Catholic clergyman and academic. He was Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and was later imprisoned by Elizabeth I. He is not John Young , Master of Pembroke Hall later in the century, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester.
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John Howe
1630 - 1705 (75 years)
John Howe was an English Puritan theologian. He served briefly as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. Life Howe was born at Loughborough. At the age of five he went to Ireland with his father, who had been ejected from his living by William Laud, but returned to England in 1641 and settled with his father in Lancaster. He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and at Magdalen College, Oxford , where for a time he was fellow and college chaplain. At Cambridge he came under the influence of Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, from whom he probably received the Platonic tinge that marks his writings. About 1654 he was appointed to the perpetual curacy of Great Torrington, Devon.
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William Taylor
William Taylor was a medieval English theologian and priest, executed as a Lollard. Nothing is known of Taylor's career before he named as Principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford in a rent roll for 1405–1406. One sermon from 1406 survives, and was republished by the Early English Text Society in 1993.
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Ibrahim al-Halabi
1460 - 1549 (89 years)
Burhān ad-Dīn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥalabī was an Islamic jurist who was born around 1460 in Aleppo, and who died in 1549 in Istanbul. His reputation as one of the most brilliant legists of his time chiefly rests on his work entitled Multaqā al-Abḥur, which became the standard handbook of the Ḥanafī school of Islamic law in the Ottoman Empire.
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Nicolas d'Orbellis
1500 - 1472 (-28 years)
Nicolas d'Orbellis was a French Franciscan theologian and philosopher, of the Scotist school. Biography He was born about 1400. He seems to have entered the monastery of the Observantines, founded in 1407, one of the first in France.
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Pieter Datheen
1531 - 1588 (57 years)
Pieter Datheen, Latin Petrus Dathenus, English, Peter Datheen, was a Dutch Calvinist theologian, the 16th century reformer of The Netherlands, who accomplished many things for the advancement the Reformed Church liturgy and ecclesiastical polity.
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Suzanne de Dietrich
1891 - 1981 (90 years)
Suzanne Anne de Dietrich was a French Protestant theologian known for her work in the ecumenical movement. Youth and education Alsatian origins Suzanne de Dietrich is the daughter of Charles de Dietrich and Anne von Türcke, and the granddaughter of Albert de Dietrich. The de Dietrich family is an emblematic family of Alsatian industrialists, several of whose members were ammestres or mayors of Strasbourg, notably Philippe-Frédéric, who commissioned the Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin, composed by Claude Rouget de Lisle on April 25, 1792, while Suzanne's maternal family belonged to the n...
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Augustine Schulte
1856 - 1937 (81 years)
Augustine Joseph Schulte was an American Catholic priest and professor at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Pennsylvania, who served as the interim rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome from 1884 to 1885.
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Thumama ibn Ashras
Thumama ibn Ashras , also known as Abu Maʿn al-Numayri was a Mu'tazila theologian during the era of the Abbasid Caliphate, the third Islamic caliphate. Life Thumama ibn Ashras was of Arab descent. He served under an influential family during the Abbasid era, the Barmakids, and was arrested when they fell from favour in 802 CE. His reputation was sufficiently restored by around the year 807 CE that Harun al-Ras̲h̲d had him join his expedition to Khorasan.
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Rupertus Meldenius
1582 - 1651 (69 years)
Rupertus Meldenius, aka Peter Meiderlin and Peter Meuderlinus was a Lutheran theologian and educator. The son of a Swabian priest, studied in Adelberg and after school visited the lower Konvikts in Maulbronn at the Tübinger Stift, where he met Johann Valentin Andreae. Meiderlin was a student of Mathias Haffenreffer and 1601 obtained a master's degree. In 1605, he was at the Repentant convent in Tübingen, 1607, he assumed the Chair of the deceased philologist Martin Crusius. After a post as senior deacon in Kirchheim unter Teck, 1612, he was "Ephorus" of the Evangelical College of St. Anna in Augsburg.
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Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Nasafi
Abu'l-Hasan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Bazdawi al-Nasafi was an early 10th-century Isma'ili missionary and theologian. In he succeeded in converting the Samanid emir, Nasr II, to Isma'ilism, and ushered in a period of Isma'ili dominance at the Samanid court that lasted until Nasr's death. In the subsequent persecution of the Isma'ilis, launched by Nuh I, al-Nasafi himself fell victim. As a theologian, he is generally credited with being among those who introduced Neoplatonic concepts into Isma'ili theology. His doctrines dominated indigenous Isma'ilism in the Iranian lands in the 9th–10th centu...
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Thomas Wilton
1270 - 1320 (50 years)
Thomas Wilton was an English theologian and scholastic philosopher, a pupil of Duns Scotus, a teacher at the University of Oxford and then the University of Paris, where he taught Walter Burley. He was a Fellow of Merton College from about 1288.
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Joannes Aurifaber
1519 - 1575 (56 years)
Joannes Aurifaber , born Johann Goldschmidt in Weimar, Germany, was a Lutheran churchman, theologian, and a Protestant reformer. Owing to a similarly-named contemporary, he is sometimes distinguished by the cognomen Vimariensis or Vinariensis .
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Frederic Harton
1889 - 1958 (69 years)
Frederic Percy Harton was an Anglican priest and author during the twentieth century. He was the husband of writer Sibyl Harton. He trained for the priesthood at King's College, London ; and ordained Deacon in 1913 and Priest in 1914. After curacies in Hornsey and Stroud Green he was Vicar of Ardeley from 1922 to 1926. He was at St Paul, Colombo from 1926 to 1927 then Warden of the Sisters of Charity, Knowle, Bristol. He was then Vicar of Baulking from 1936 to 1951.
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Giovanni Mincio da Morrovalle
1250 - 1312 (62 years)
Giovanni Mincio may also refer to antipope Benedict XGiovanni Minio or Mincio, of Morrovalle or Murrovale was an Italian Franciscan who became Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, cardinal-bishop of Porto , Protector of the Order of Friars Minors and dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals .
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Richard Middleton
1300 - 1300 (0 years)
Richard Middleton was an English ecclesiastic and Lord Chancellor of England. Middleton was appointed Lord Chancellor on 29 July 1269. He was out of office before his death, but his successor Walter de Merton is first mentioned in the office on 29 November 1272.
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William Atwater
1440 - 1521 (81 years)
William Atwater was an English churchman, who became Bishop of Lincoln in 1514. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1480. He served as Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, in the period from 1497 to 1502.
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Clarence Pickett
1884 - 1965 (81 years)
Clarence Evan Pickett was an American religious leader, notable 20th century Quaker, and head of a non-governmental, humanitarian relief agency. Background Pickett was born on October 19, 1884, in Cissna Park, Illinois. He came from a family of Quakers and grew up in Glen Elder, Kansas. He studied at Penn College in Iowa, the Hartford Theological Seminary and at Harvard.
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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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Thomas Newlin
1688 - 1744 (56 years)
Thomas Newlin was an English cleric, known as a preacher. Life The son of William Newlin, rector of St. Swithin's, Winchester, he was baptised there 29 October 1688. From 1702 to 1706 he was a scholar of Winchester College, and was elected demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1706. He graduated B.A. 26 June 1710, M.A. 7 May 1713, and B.D. 8 July 1727. He was a fellow of Magdalen from 1717 to 1721.
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John Bascombe Lock
1849 - 1921 (72 years)
John Bascombe Lock was an English priest and academic, who was bursar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and author of several mathematical textbooks. He was born 18 March 1849 in Dorchester, son of Joseph Lock , a butcher and farmer, and Elizabeth Marvin née Wills. He was baptised on 24 June 1849 at St Peter's Church, Dorchester. He was educated at William Barnes's School, Dorchester; Bristol Grammar School; and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained his BA in 1872. He was ordained deacon in 1872, and priest in 1873. He was assistant master at Eton College from 1872 to ...
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Pierre Busée
1540 - 1587 (47 years)
Pierre Busée was a Dutch Jesuit theologian. He assisted in producing the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum and the catechism of Peter Canisius. Life When twenty-two years old he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Cologne where six years later he became master of novices. In addition to this office he was appointed to give religious instruction to the upper classes in the Jesuit college at Cologne.
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Richard Wünsch
1869 - 1915 (46 years)
Richard Wünsch was a German classical philologist. He studied classical philology at the University of Marburg, receiving his doctorate in 1893. Following graduation, he spent two years on an extended study trip to Paris, Spain, Italy and Greece. He obtained his habilitation in Breslau, and in 1902 was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Giessen. Later on, he held professorships at the universities of Königsberg and Münster . In World War I he died at Iłża, while serving as a battalion leader during an assault on the Russian army.
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Charles S. Braden
1887 - 1970 (83 years)
Charles Samuel Braden was Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Literature of Religions at Northwestern University. He joined the faculty in 1926 and held the professorship from 1943; he was awarded emeritus status in 1954. Braden became known in particular for the study of new religious movements and world religions. His Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought remains an important history of the New Thought family of NRMs.
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Georges Florovsky
1893 - 1979 (86 years)
Georges Vasilievich Florovsky was a Russian Orthodox priest, theologian, and historian. Born in the Russian Empire, he spent his working life in Paris and New York . With Sergei Bulgakov, Vladimir Lossky, Justin Popović and Dumitru Stăniloae he was one of the more influential Eastern Orthodox Christian theologians of the mid-20th century. He was particularly concerned that modern Christian theology might receive inspiration from the lively intellectual debates of the patristic traditions of the undivided Church rather than from later Scholastic or Reformation categories of thought.
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