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,
#4551
Ernst Zimmermann
1786 - 1832 (46 years)
Ernst Christoph Philipp Zimmermann was a German classical philologist and theologian. He was the brother of theologian Karl Zimmermann . He studied at the Darmstadt gymnasium as a pupil of historian Helfrich Bernhard Wenck, and afterwards furthered his education at the University of Giessen . In 1805 he became a clergyman in the community of Auerbach , then in 1809 was named deacon in Gross-Gerau and pastor in nearby Büttelborn. In 1814 he was appointed court deacon at the Hofkirche in Darmstadt, where two years later he became a court preacher. In 1831 he attained the titles of prelate, eccl...
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William Norman Guthrie
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
William Norman Guthrie also known as Norman de Lagutry was an American clergyman and grandson of famous radical Frances Wright. His father, Eugène Picault de Lagutry, was the husband of Frances Sylva Piquepal d'Arusmont, the daughter of Frances Wright.
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Abner Jackson
1811 - 1874 (63 years)
Abner Jackson was an American minister and teacher and President of Hobart College in Geneva, New York from 1858 to 1867 and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut from 1867 until his death, where he had originally studied and taught. At Trinity in the 1840s and 1850s he was Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy. Whilst president of Hobart he was responsible for changing the name from Hobart Free College to honor its original founder, Bishop John Henry Hobart, and was responsible for much fundraising. In 1863, he raised the funds to build the St. John's Chapel.
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Gaspar Hurtado
1575 - 1647 (72 years)
Gaspar Hurtado was a Spanish Jesuit theologian. Life He studied at the University of Alcalá de Henares, where in the examination for the doctorate he won the highest place from numerous competitors. He was at once appointed professor in the university, and was winning fame as a lecturer, when at the age of 32, he resigned his chair and entered the Society of Jesus .
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Konrad Hubert
1507 - 1577 (70 years)
Konrad Hubert, also Konrad Huber, Konrad Huober, or Konrad Humbert , was a German Reformed theologian, hymn writer and reformer. He was for 18 years the assistant of Martin Bucer at St. Thomas, Strasbourg.
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Chaim Heller
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Rabbi Chaim Heller was a prominent Talmudist and Targumic scholar who combined traditional rabbinic erudition with expertise in modern textual research. He was renowned for his genius and command of ancient languages. He was posthumously awarded the Rabbi Kook Prize for Rabbinical literature in 2007.
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John C. Young
1803 - 1857 (54 years)
John Clarke Young was an American educator and pastor who was the fourth president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. A graduate of Dickinson College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he entered the ministry in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1828. He accepted the presidency of Centre College in 1830, holding the position until his death in 1857, making him the longest-serving president in the college's history. He is regarded as one of the college's best presidents, as he increased the endowment of the college more than five-fold during his term and increased the graduating class size from t...
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William de Montibus
1140 - 1213 (73 years)
William de Montibus was a theologian and teacher. He travelled to Paris in the 1160s, where he studied under Peter Comestor, eventually opening his own school on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. He was appointed by Hugh of Lincoln as master of the cathedral school in Lincoln, England in the 1180s, where his lectures drew students from around the country. He was also chancellor of the cathedral by 1194, and remained in both positions until his death in 1213. He was the instructor of Alexander Neckam in Paris, and in Lincoln taught Samuel Presbiter and Richard of Wetheringsett.
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John of Segovia
1395 - 1458 (63 years)
John of Segovia, or in Spanish Juan de Segovia , was a Castilian prelate and theologian. He played a prominent role in the Council of Basle and was in touch with the leading humanists of his day, such as Nicholas of Cusa. He spent the last years of his life in exile in Savoy, where he commissioned an accurate translation of the Koran into Spanish, which he then translated into Latin.
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Frederik Christian von Haven
1727 - 1763 (36 years)
Frederik Christian von Haven was a Danish philologist and theologian who took part in the Danish expedition to Yemen. Biography Background and early life Frederik von Haven was born on 26 June 1728 in the rectory of Vester Skerninge on the Danish island of Funen, where his father Lambert von Haven was a priest, and christened on 3 July in the Church of Our Lady in Odense. His mother was Maren, née Wielandt. He had three sisters; he was especially close to Pernille Elisabeth von Haven, who never married.
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Hezekiah Burton
1632 - 1681 (49 years)
Hezekiah Burton was an English theologian. Life He was educated in Sutton-on-Lound and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow. He was an associate of a number of intellectual figures of the day, in particular Richard Cumberland whose De legibus naturae he edited and to which he contributed an Address to the Reader. He is mentioned in Pepys's Diary. He was chaplain to Orlando Bridgeman, and used the contact to support Cumberland.
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Mitrofan Lodyzhensky
1852 - 1917 (65 years)
Mitrofan Vasilyevich Lodyzhensky was a Russian religious philosopher, playwright, and statesman, best known for his Mystical Trilogy comprising Super-consciousness and the Ways to Achieve It, Light Invisible, and Dark Force.
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William Leitch
1814 - 1864 (50 years)
William Leitch was a Scottish astronomer, naturalist and mathematician, and a minister of the Church of Scotland. Leitch studied mathematics and science at the University of Glasgow, and moved to Canada in 1860 to take the post of principal at Queen's University.
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Petrus Opmeer
1526 - 1595 (69 years)
Petrus Opmeer was a Dutch Catholic historian and controversialist. According to his biographer Valerius Andreas, Opmeer was a friend of "painters, sculptors and architects", including Maarten van Heemskerck, Pieter Aertsen, Willem Danielsz van Tetrode, Frans Floris, Antonis Mor and Philip Galle.
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Thomas Edward Brown
1830 - 1897 (67 years)
Thomas Edward Brown , commonly referred to as T. E. Brown, was a late-Victorian scholar, schoolmaster, poet, and theologian from the Isle of Man. Having achieved a double first at Christ Church, Oxford, and election as a fellow of Oriel in April 1854, Brown served first as headmaster of The Crypt School, Gloucester, then as a young master at the fledgling Clifton College, near Bristol
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Johann Gottlob Carpzov
1679 - 1767 (88 years)
Johann Gottlob Carpzov was a German Christian Old Testament scholar, a nephew of Johann Benedict Carpzov II and a son of Samuel Benedict Carpzov. He was the most famous and most important Biblical scholar of the Carpzov family.
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Andrzej Alojzy Ankwicz
1777 - 1838 (61 years)
Andrzej Alojzy Ankwicz was the Roman Catholic archbishop of Prague from 1833 to 1838. Biography Ankwicz was born in Kraków, Poland in 1777. He was ordained a priest on 2 September 1810. In 1815, he was appointed and ordained archbishop of Lviv in Ukraine. He remained in this capacity for 18 years until 30 September 1833 when he was appointed the archbishop of Prague. He died at the age of 60 years on 26 March 1838 to be succeeded in his archbishopric by Alois Josef Schrenk.
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Gerhard Tersteegen
1697 - 1769 (72 years)
Gerhard Tersteegen , was a German Reformed religious writer and hymnist. Life Tersteegen was born in Moers, at that time the principal city of a county belonging to the House of Orange-Nassau that formed a Protestant enclave in the midst of a Catholic country.
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Owen Oglethorpe
1502 - 1559 (57 years)
Owen Oglethorpe was an English academic and Bishop of Carlisle, 1557–1559. Childhood and Education Oglethorpe was born in Tadcaster, Yorkshire, England , the third son of George Oglethorpe. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was elected a Fellow in 1524. He completed his BA in 1525, received his MA in 1529, and his BTh and DTh in 1536. He was reputed to have taken a keen interest in his studies.
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Peter of Aquila
1300 - 1361 (61 years)
Peter of Aquila was an Italian Friar Minor, theologian and bishop. Peter was born at L'Aquila in the Abruzzo, Italy, towards the end of the 13th century. In 1334 he figures as a Master of Theology and as Minister Provincial of his Order for Tuscany. In 1334 he was appointed confessor to Queen Joan I of Naples and shortly afterwards Inquisitor for Florence. His servants having been punished by public authority, the Inquisitor excommunicated the priors and placed the town under interdict.
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George Bullock
1520 - 1572 (52 years)
George Bullock was an English Roman Catholic theologian. Life He graduated as a Bachelor of Arts at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1538, becoming a fellow. In the reign of Edward VI he spent time in France, at Nevers Abbey. He was Master of St John's College, from 12 May 1554 to 20 July 1559.
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Louis-Honoré Pâquet
1838 - 1915 (77 years)
Louis-Honoré Pâquet was a French-Canadian Roman Catholic priest and university teacher, as well as celebrated orator of his time. Biography Pâquet was born in 1838 in Saint-Nicolas, near Lévis, in what was then Lotbinière County, on the southern shore of the Saint Lawrence River opposite Québec City. The son of farmers Étienne Pâquet and Ursule Lambert, he was descended from an old, pious family of the area, and was closely related to theologian Louis-Adolphe Pâquet as well as to provincial MLA Étienne-Théodore Pâquet . His studies, like those of his older brother Benjamin, were financed by t...
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John Johnson
1662 - 1725 (63 years)
John Johnson, of Cranbrook was an English clergyman, known as a theologian in the Laudian tradition. Life Born 30 December 1662, at Frindsbury in Kent, he was son of the vicar, Thomas Johnson, by Mary, daughter of Francis Drayton, rector of Little Chart, Kent. His father died about four years after his marriage, and Mrs. Johnson, with her two children, a son and a daughter, settled at Canterbury, where John was sent to the King's School. At the age of 15 he went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1681. He was afterwards nominated to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College by the dean and chapter of Canterbury; proceeded M.A.
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Bernhard Stempfle
1882 - 1934 (52 years)
Bernhard Stempfle was a Roman Catholic priest and journalist. He helped Adolf Hitler in the writing of Mein Kampf. He was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives. Biography Stempfle entered the priesthood in 1904. He joined the Hieronymite order in Italy. In the years leading up to the First World War, he wrote for the Corriere della Sera and various other German and Italian papers. Following the outbreak of war, he returned to Munich, performed pastoral work at the university, and established close contacts with Reform Catholic elements in the city, especially the nationalistic Hofklerus at St.
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Agostino Bernal
1587 - 1642 (55 years)
Agostino Bernal was a Spanish Jesuit theologian. Life He entered the Society of Jesus in 1603 when sixteen years old. A classical scholar, he taught humanities and rhetoric with success. The greater part of his life, however, he spent as professor of philosophy and theology at Saragossa.
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Johann Stössel
1524 - 1576 (52 years)
Johann Stössel was a Lutheran Theologian and Reformer. Life Stössel was born in Kitzingen. He came to Wittenberg at 15 and became a master after 10 years of study. Since he distanced himself from the Philippists, he was appointed by John Frederick II, Duke of Saxony as a court preacher in Weimar. Here he developed into a zealous Gnesio-Lutheran. As such, he took part in the Reformation in the Margraviate of Baden-Durlach. It was in keeping with his strident attitude that he wanted to include anathemas in the church order there against all dissenters.
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Niketas Stethatos
1000 - 1090 (90 years)
Niketas Stethatos was a Byzantine mystic and theologian who is considered a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was a follower of Symeon the New Theologian and wrote the most complete biography of Symeon, Life of Symeon.
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Matthias Hoë von Hoënegg
1580 - 1645 (65 years)
Matthias Hoë von Hoënegg was a German Lutheran pastor. Life Matthias's father was Leonhard Höe von Höenegg, a Lutheran imperial councillor and doctor of law descended from old Austrian nobility. Matthias was born prematurely and so his health was weak during his early years, meaning he only started speaking when he was seven. His father initially had him taught by a private tutor until, once he was almost fully educated, he was allowed to visit Vienna's St Stephan's Stadtschule, where he developed remarkably and began talking to the city's scholars.
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Thomas Smart Hughes
1786 - 1847 (61 years)
Thomas Smart Hughes was an English cleric, theologian and historian. Life Born at Nuneaton, Warwickshire, on 25 August 1786, he was the eldest surviving son of Hugh Hughes, curate of Nuneaton, and rector of Hardwick, Northamptonshire. He received his early education from John Spencer Cobbold, first at Nuneaton grammar school, and later as a private pupil at Wilby, Suffolk. In 1801 he was sent to Shrewsbury School, then under the head-mastership of Dr. Samuel Butler, and in October 1803 entered as a pensioner of St John's College, Cambridge. His university career was distinguished. Besides col...
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Thomas Eyre
1748 - 1810 (62 years)
Thomas Eyre , was a Catholic theologian. A graduate of the English College, Douai, he became the first president of St. Cuthbert's College at Ushaw. Life Thomas Eyre, the fourth son of Nathaniel and Jane Broomhead Eyre, was born in 1748 at Glossop, Derbyshire. On 24 June 1758, he, with his brothers Edward and John, arrived at Esquerchin, near Douai, the preparatory school for the English college. He entered Douai college in 1762. After being ordained priest in 1775, he was retained at the college as general prefect and master of the classes known as rhetoric and poetry.
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Otto Zöckler
1833 - 1906 (73 years)
Otto Zöckler was a German theologian, professor at Greifswald. He edited a Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaft, and other works. Quote from him: “The wise man is also the just, pious, the upright, the man who walks in the way of truth.”
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Richard S. Rust
1815 - 1906 (91 years)
Richard Sutton Rust was an American Methodist preacher, abolitionist, educator, writer, lecturer, secretary of the Freedmen's Bureau, and founder of the Freedmen's Aid Society. He also helped found multiple educational institutions including his namesake Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the oldest historically black United Methodist-related college.
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Johann Sigismund Mörl
1710 - 1791 (81 years)
Johann Sigismund Mörl was a German theologian. Son of Gustav Philipp Mörl, he was born in Nuremberg on 3 March 1710 and was educated in his native place until ready for the university at Altdorf, where he studied theology after 1727. In 1735 he was appointed dean of a church at Nuremberg. He preached until 1759, when he was appointed minister and inspector of the "Egidianum." In 1765 he was elected in this gymnasium to the professorship of Greek. Towards the close of 1770 he was called to the position of minister of St. Lawrence's church. In 1773 he accepted the position of first minister at St.
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Jakob Beurlin
1520 - 1561 (41 years)
Jakob Beurlin was a German Lutheran theologian and Protestant reformer. Life Beurlin was born in Dornstetten. In November 1533, he entered the University of Tübingen. When the Protestant Reformation was introduced there in 1534, he remained faithful to Catholicism, diligently studying philosophy and the writings of the Church Fathers. His transition to the new doctrine took place quietly.
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Ralph Niger
1140 - Present (886 years)
Ralph Niger, Latin Radulphus Niger or Radulfus Niger, anglicized Ralph the Black , was an Anglo-French theologian and one of the English chroniclers. He was from Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, and became Archdeacon of Gloucester.
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Alexander von Oettingen
1827 - 1906 (79 years)
Alexander Konstantin von Oettingen was a Baltic German Lutheran theologian and statistician. Biography Oettingen was born at Wissust in the Kreis Dorpat of the Governorate of Livonia, the member of a Baltic German noble family that produced many scholars, including his brothers Georg von Oettingen, professor of medicine at the University of Dorpat , and Arthur von Oettingen, professor of physique in Dorpat and Leipzig. Alexander von Oettingen studied at Erlangen, Bonn, and Berlin.
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Jacob Stolterfoht
1600 - 1668 (68 years)
Jacob Stolterfoht was a German Lutheran theologian and leading pastor in Lübeck during and directly following the Thirty Years' War. Life Stolterfoht was one of the youngest of the ten children of the Lübeck pastor Johann Stolterfoht and his wife, born Margaretha Bacmeister , the only daughter of another north German theologian. In the first part of 1620 Jacob enrolled at the University of Rostock to study theology. He moved on to Wittemberg in 1621 and from there to Greifswald, where he studied between 1622 and 1623. He then returned to Rostock, where he concluded his universit...
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Willbur Fisk
1792 - 1839 (47 years)
Willbur Fisk was a prominent American Methodist minister, educator and theologian. He was the first President of Wesleyan University. Family background Fisk was born in Guilford, , Vermont on August 31, 1792. His father, the Hon. Isaiah Fisk , was from Massachusetts and descended from William Fisk who emigrated to America from England in about 1637. His mother, Hannah was also from Massachusetts and was descended from John Bacon who came to America in 1640. Isaiah and Hannah Fisk married on May 2, 1786, and moved to Guildford, where Isaiah's father, Amos Fisk, had purchased land at the outbreak of the American Revolution.
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Lilian Scholes
1902 - 1972 (70 years)
Lilian Lelean Scholes was a Methodist preacher, theologian and author in Melbourne, Australia who in 1934 was the first woman to graduate with the degree of Bachelor of Divinity from the Melbourne College of Divinity.
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Johann Hiltalinger
1315 - 1392 (77 years)
Johann Hiltalinger was a Swiss Augustinian theologian who became Bishop of Lombez. Life Born at Basel, he entered the Augustinian order and received the degree of master of theology at the University of Paris in 1371. From 1371 to 1377 he was provincial in the Rhenish-Swabian province of the order. He again held this post in 1379, being general procurator in the intervening period.
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Roswell Dwight Hitchcock
1817 - 1887 (70 years)
Roswell Dwight Hitchcock was a United States Congregationalist clergyman. Biography He was born at East Machias, Maine. He graduated at Amherst College in 1836, and from the Andover Theological Seminary, Massachusetts, in 1838. He studied in Germany, at Halle and Berlin, in 1847. He was a tutor at Amherst in 1839–1842, and was minister of The Congregational Church in Exeter, Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1845–1852.
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John Chapman
1704 - 1784 (80 years)
John Chapman was an English cleric and scholar, archdeacon of Sudbury from 1741. Life The son of the Rev. Walter Chapman, curate of Wareham, Dorset, then rector of Strathfieldsay, Hampshire, he was probably born in 1704, probably at Strathfieldsay. He was educated at Eton College, and elected to King's College, Cambridge, where he became A.B. 1727, and A. M. 1731. While tutor of his college, Charles Pratt, Jacob Bryant, and, for a short time, Horace Walpole were amongst his pupils.
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Richard Parsons
1882 - 1948 (66 years)
Richard Godfrey Parsons was an Anglican bishop who served in three dioceses during the first half of the 20th century, and a renowned liberal scholar. Parsonshe was born into a Lancashire family on 12 November 1882 and educated at Durham School and Magdalen College, Oxford. Ordained priest in 1907 he was a curate at Hampstead before four years as Chaplain at University College, Oxford. and Principal of Wells Theological College from 1911-16. He served for one year as a Temporary Chaplain to the Forces. Married with two children, he expressed a preference to remain 'at home' and he was posted to '2 General Hospital, London'.
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James Caruthers Rhea Ewing
1854 - 1925 (71 years)
Sir James Caruthers Rhea Ewing was a prominent American Presbyterian missionary, educationist, theologian, and author who worked in India. Ewing was born in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania to Eleanor Rhea and James Henry Ewing. Many of the family where clergymen including granduncle Rev. James Ewing Caruthers. The family moved to Saltsburg in 1860. He went to a local school which was called "Clawson's" and then taught at school for a while. He joined Washington & Jefferson College in 1873 and graduated in 1876. He joined the Presbyterian Church of Washington and was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity.
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Wilhelm Bugge
1838 - 1896 (58 years)
Frederik Wilhelm Klumpp Bugge was a Norwegian theologian and politician for the Conservative Party. Personal life Bugge was born in Trondhjem as a son of rector Frederik Moltke Bugge and Anne Marie Magelssen . He was a nephew of professor Søren Bruun Bugge and grandson of bishop Peter Olivarius Bugge.
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Arthur Whipple Jenks
1863 - 1922 (59 years)
Arthur Whipple Jenks was an American Episcopal theologian. He was born at Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1884 and from the General Theological Seminary in 1896. He received the degree of D.D. from Dartmouth in 1911. He published Notes for Meditation on the Beatitudes of the Psalter . Arthur Whipple Jenks was a clergyman, ecclesiastical writer and historian. Mr. Jenks was born to George Edwin Jenks, member of the N.H. State House of Representatives in 1873 and 1874. Mr. Jenks was a descendant of one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Rhode Island .
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Nathaniel Marshall
1680 - 1730 (50 years)
Nathaniel Marshall was an English churchman and theologian. His views were high church and cessationist, and he was a strong opponent of the nonjurors. Life He was son of John Marshall, rector of St George, Bloomsbury, and entered as a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 8 July 1696. He was admitted to the degree of LL.B. in 1702, and afterwards took holy orders, as deacon in 1705 and priest in 1705.
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Vincent Baron
1604 - 1674 (70 years)
Vincent Baron was a French Dominican theologian and preacher. Biography He was born at Martres, in the département of the Haute-Garonne, France, 17 May 1604, and died in Paris on 21 January 1674. At the age of seventeen he passed from the college of the Jesuits in Toulouse to the Dominican convent of St. Thomas in the same city. He made his religious profession there on 16 May 1622, where he also completed his course in philosophy and theology, and taught these subjects.
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Théodore Tronchin
1582 - 1657 (75 years)
Théodore Tronchin was a Genevan Calvinist theologian, controversialist and Hebraist. Life He was born at Geneva on 17 April 1582, the son of Rémi Tronchin and Théodora Rocca, the adopted daughter of Théodore de Bèze. He studied theology at Geneva, Basel, Heidelberg, Franeker, and Leiden. He became professor of oriental languages at the academy of Geneva in 1606; he was preacher there in 1608, and professor of theology in 1618. He was rector in 1610.
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Paul Riessler
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Paul Riessler was a noted German biblical scholar who has written a number of widely recognized books including Altjüdisches Schrifttum außerhalb der Bibel. Biography Paul Riessler was born 16 September 1865 in Stuttgart, Germany. He died on 16 September 1935 in Tübingen, Germany.
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