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,
#4551
Guillaume Herincx
1621 - 1678 (57 years)
Guillaume Herincx , was a Belgian Franciscan theologian. He became bishop of Ypres. Life Herincx was born at Helmond, North Brabant. After receiving his preliminary education at 's-Hertogenbosch he entered the University of Louvain, where he devoted himself to the study of the ancient classics and obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy. After completing his university course, he resolved to embrace the religious state and entered the Franciscan Order.
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Charles Edward Smith
1835 - 1929 (94 years)
Charles Edward Smith was an American author and Baptist ecclesiologist and apologist. He was the pastor of Fredonia, New York's Baptist Church from 1885 to 1900. Many of his sermons, works, and manuscripts were published posthumously.
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Johann Daniel Overbeck
1715 - 1802 (87 years)
Johann Daniel Overbeck was an evangelical theologian and Rector at the Katharineum. Biography He was the son of the Superintendent, . He and his two brothers attended the in Lüneburg. His parents could not afford the fees for all three sons to continue their education, so he was already working as a tutor while attending the Katharineum. In 1734, he began studying theology at the University of Helmstedt, where Johann Lorenz von Mosheim hired him as a private tutor to help defray his tuition.
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John Adams
1543 - 1586 (43 years)
John Adams was an English Catholic priest and martyr. Life He was born at Winterborne St Martin in Dorset at an unknown date and became a Protestant minister. He later entered the Catholic Church and travelled to the English College then at Rheims, arriving on 7 December 1579. He was ordained a priest at Soissons on 17 December 1580. He set out for the mission in England on 29 March 1581, but returned to Rheims and again set out for England on 18 June 1583.
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Thomas Dale
1797 - 1870 (73 years)
Thomas Dale was a British priest in the Church of England who was the Dean of Rochester for a brief period in 1870. He was also a poet and theologian. Life Dale was born in Pentonville and educated at Christ's Hospital and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
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John Sprint
John Sprint was an English clergyman and theologian, as well as a writer in favor of conformity, despite earlier Puritan views that had led him into conflict with the authorities. Life His grandfather John Sprint was an apothecary in Gloucestershire; his father, also John Sprint , was appointed dean of Bristol in 1571, archdeacon of Wiltshire 1578, and treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral in 1584.
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Francis Coster
1532 - 1619 (87 years)
Francis Coster was a Flemish Jesuit, theologian and author. Life Frans de Costere was received into the Society of Jesus by St. Ignatius on 7 November 1552. While still a young man he was sent to Cologne and lectured there on Sacred Scripture and astronomy. His reputation as a professor was established within a very short time, and on 10 December 1564, the university of Cologne conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Theology.
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John Sedberry Marshall
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
John Sedberry Marshall was an American scholar whose works focused on topics related to the United States Episcopal Church; he authored studies on the theology of William Porcher DuBose and Richard Hooker.
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Heinrich Wangnereck
1595 - 1664 (69 years)
Heinrich Wangnereck was a Catholic theologian, preacher, author. He was born in Munich. The extant sketches of his life give no uniform information respecting the dates of events; it is, however, unanimously stated that when sixteen years old he entered the novitiate of the upper German province of the Society of Jesus, at Landsberg, took the usual course of instruction, and in addition was for a time teacher of the lowest class at the gymnasium.
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Antoinette Butte
1898 - 1986 (88 years)
Antoinette Butte, was the French Protestant founder of French Girl Guiding from 1916, then Head of the Pomeyrol Community from 1938.
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Peter Williams
1723 - 1796 (73 years)
Peter Williams was a prominent leader of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism in the eighteenth century, best known for publishing Welsh-language bibles and bible commentary. Personal life Williams was born on 15 January 1723 at West Marsh Farm in Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, the son of Owen and Elizabeth Williams. In 1748, he married Mary Jenkins and settled at Llandyfaelog in Carmarthenshire.
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Samuel A. Eliot
1862 - 1950 (88 years)
Samuel Atkins Eliot II was an American Unitarian minister. In 1898 the American Unitarian Association elected him secretary but in 1900 the position was redesignated as president and Eliot served in that office from inception to 1927, significantly expanding the association's activities and consolidating denominational power in its administration.
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Jacob of Juterbogk
1380 - 1464 (84 years)
Jacob of Juterbogk was a German monk and theologian. Benedict Stolzenhagen, known in religion as Jacob, was born at Jüterbog in Brandenburg of poor peasant stock. He became a Cistercian at the monastery of Paradiz in Poland, and was sent by the abbot to the University of Kraków, where he became master in philosophy and doctor of theology. He returned to his monastery, of which he became abbot. In 1441, however, discontented with the absence of strict discipline of Salvatorberg near Erfurt, of which he became prior. He lectured on theology at the University of Erfurt, of which he was rector in 1456, and wrote around eighty treatises.
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Stevenson McGill
1765 - 1840 (75 years)
Stevenson McGill was a Scottish Presbyterian minister of the Church of Scotland who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1828. He was an author and was elected to be a professor of divinity at Glasgow University.
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Thomas Vicars
1589 - 1638 (49 years)
Thomas Vicars was a 17th-century English theologian and rhetorician. He was born in Carlisle in Cumberland , the son of William and Eve Vicars. He entered Queen's College, Oxford in 1607 as a poor serving child. He then became a tabarder, chaplain and fellow within nine years. In 1622, he was admitted to the reading of the sentences. Recognised as a learned theologian, he entered the household of George Carleton, the Bishop of Chichester, whose step-daughter, Anne, the daughter of the sometime Ambassador to France, Henry Neville of Billingbear House in Berkshire, he married. Carleton made him...
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Anthony Champney
1569 - 1643 (74 years)
Anthony Champney was an English Roman Catholic priest and controversialist. Life He studied at Reims and Rome . As priest he was imprisoned at Wisbech Castle, and was active against the Jesuits, acting later for the Appellant Clergy in Rome .
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Giuseppe Guarino
1827 - 1897 (70 years)
Giuseppe Guarino was an Italian Roman Catholic prelate and cardinal who served as the Archbishop of Messina from 1875 until his death. He was also the founder of the Apostoli della Sacra Famiglia. Guarino dedicated himself to proper religious formation for both priests and nuns while serving in both Siracusa and Messina and was known for reigniting the faith in those who were considered cut off from the faith.
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Thomas Nowell
1730 - 1801 (71 years)
Thomas Nowell was a Welsh-born clergyman, historian and religious controversialist. Life Nowell was the son of Cradock Nowell of Cardiff. He went up to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1746 and in 1747 he won the Duke of Beaufort's exhibition. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1750, was awarded an exhibitionship in 1752, and took his Master of Arts degree in 1753. Nowell was made a fellow of Oriel in 1753 and served as junior treasurer to college between 1755 and 1757, senior treasurer between 1757 and 1758, and Dean between 1758 and 1760 and again in 1763.
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Clifford Herschel Moore
1866 - 1931 (65 years)
Clifford Herschel Moore was an American Latin scholar. Biography Clifford Herschel Moore was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts on March 11, 1866. He married Lorena Leadbetter on July 23, 1890. He was educated at Harvard and in Europe at Munich . He taught classics in California and Massachusetts, at Phillips Academy in Andover .
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Aodh Mac Cathmhaoil
1571 - 1626 (55 years)
Aodh Mac Cathmhaoil, O.F.M. , was an Irish Franciscan theologian and Archbishop of Armagh. He was known by Irish speakers at Leuven by the honorary name Aodh Mac Aingil , and it was under this title that he published the Irish work Scáthán Shacramuinte na hAthridhe.
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Étienne Bauny
1564 - 1649 (85 years)
Étienne Bauny was a French Jesuit theologian. Life He was admitted into the Society of Jesus, 20 July 1593, and after teaching humanities and rhetoric he was promoted to the chair of moral theology which he occupied for sixteen years. He was for a time superior of the Jesuit residence at Pontoise. He had the confidence of the most distinguished prelates of his age, especially of Cardinal François de La Rochefoucauld, who chose him as his spiritual director, and of René de Rieux, Bishop of Léon, who entrusted to him the settlement of the most delicate affairs of his episcopate.
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Georg Seyler
1800 - 1866 (66 years)
Georg August Wilhelm Seyler was a German theologian and priest, and the adoptive father of Felix Hoppe-Seyler, the principal founder of biochemistry and molecular biology. Biography Georg Seyler was a son of the court pharmacist Abel Seyler the Younger and Caroline Klügel, and was a grandson of the famous theatre principal Abel Seyler and of the mathematician and physicist Georg Simon Klügel. He belonged to the originally Swiss Seyler family from Liestal and Basel. He was a nephew of the prominent Hamburg banker Ludwig Erdwin Seyler and of the Sturm und Drang poet Johann Anton Leisewitz.
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Achille Gagliardi
1537 - 1607 (70 years)
Achille Gagliardi was a Jesuit ascetic writer and spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition. Life Gagliardi was born at Padua, Italy. After a brilliant career at the University of Padua he entered the Society of Jesus in 1559 with two brothers younger than himself. He taught philosophy at the Roman College, theology at Padua and Milan, and successfully directed several houses of his order in Northern Italy. He displayed indefatigable zeal in preaching, giving retreats and directing congregations, and was held in great esteem as a theologian and spiritual guide by the Archbishop of Milan, ...
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Robert Parker
1564 - 1614 (50 years)
Robert Parker was an English Puritan clergyman and scholar. He became minister of a separatist congregation in Holland where he died while in exile for his heterodoxy. The Revd. Cotton Mather wrote of Parker as "one of the greatest scholars in the English Nation, and in some sort the father of all Nonconformists of our day."
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Francesco Amico
1578 - 1651 (73 years)
Francesco Amico was a prominent Catholic theologian, born in Cosenza, in Calabria, 2 April 1578. Biography Francesco Amico entered the Society of Jesus in 1596. For twenty-four years he was professor of theology at Naples, Aquila, and Gratz, and, for five years, chancellor in the academy of Gratz. He was scholastic in his method, adapting his treatises to a four-year course of teaching. He wrote De Deo Uno et Trino; De Natura Angelorum; De Ultimo Fine; De Fide, Spe, et Charitate; De Justitia et Jure, which was prohibited, 18 June 1651 donec corrigatur, on account of three propositions in it, which Pope Alexander VII and Innocent XI objected to.
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George Wishart
1703 - 1785 (82 years)
George Wishart was a Scottish minister who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1748. He was also Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the King of England and Dean of the Chapel Royal.
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Deceneus
100 BC - 100 BC (0 years)
Deceneus or Decaeneus was a priest of Dacia during the reign of Burebista . He is mentioned in the near-contemporary Greek Geographica of Strabo and in the 6th-century Latin Getica of Jordanes, where he is called Dicineus.
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Francis Patrick McFarland
1819 - 1874 (55 years)
Francis Patrick McFarland was an American Catholic bishop who served as the third Bishop of Hartford. Biography His parents, John McFarland and Mary McKeever, emigrated from Armagh, and took up farming near Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Francis was employed as teacher in the village school, but soon entered Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he graduated with high honours and was retained as teacher. The following year, 1845, he was ordained, 18 May, at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York by Archbishop Hughes, who immediately detailed the young priest to a professor's chair at St.
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William Adams Brown
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
William Adams Brown was an American minister, professor and philanthropist. Early life Brown was born in New York City on December 29, 1865, and named after his maternal grandfather, the Rev. William Adams. He was the eldest son of John Crosby Brown and Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown. His siblings were Eliza Coe Adams, Mary Magoun Brown, James Crosby Brown, Thatcher Magoun Brown, and Amy Brighthurst Brown .
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Alexander Roberts
1826 - 1901 (75 years)
Alexander Roberts was a 19th-century Scottish biblical scholar. Life Born at Marykirk, Kincardineshire, on 12 May 1826, he was the son of Alexander Roberts, a flax-spinner, and his wife, Helen Stuart. He was educated at the grammar school and King's College, Aberdeen, where he graduated MA in March 1847, being the Simpson Greek prizeman. From 1849 to 1851 he trained as a minister of the Free Church of Scotland at New College, Edinburgh.
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Charles Backus Storrs
1794 - 1833 (39 years)
Rev. Charles Backus Storrs was an American minister, abolitionist, and the first President of Western Reserve College and Preparatory School, now Case Western Reserve University and Western Reserve Academy.
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Zachary Brooke
1716 - 1788 (72 years)
Zachary Brooke was an English clergyman and academic, Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Life The son of Zachary Brooke, a graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge , and at one time vicar of Hawkston-cum-Newton, near Cambridge, was born in 1716 at Hamerton, Huntingdonshire. He was educated at Stamford school, and was admitted a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, 28 June 1734. He was subsequently elected a fellow there, proceeded B.A. in 1737, M.A. in 1741, B.D. in 1748, and D.D. in 1753.
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Pierre Marchant
1585 - 1661 (76 years)
Pierre Marchant or Petrus Marchantius O.F.M.Rec. was a spiritual writer and religious reformer in 17th-century Flanders. Life Marchant was born at Couvin in what is now Belgium in 1585 and entered the recollect community in that town in 1601, aged 16.
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Arthur De Schrevel
1850 - 1934 (84 years)
Arthur Carolus De Schrevel was a Belgian priest and historian, specialising in the 16th and 17th centuries, and in particular Catholic Church history during the Dutch Revolt. He was also a prolific contributor to the Biographie Nationale de Belgique.
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Ambrosius Moibanus
1494 - 1554 (60 years)
Ambrosius Moibanus was a German Lutheran theologian and reformer, and first Lutheran pastor at St Elisabeth's church in Breslau . He was active in Silesia. He was an opponent of the Anabaptists, and pressed for their persecution.
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Andrew Sledd
1870 - 1939 (69 years)
Andrew Warren Sledd was an American theologian, university professor and university president. A native of Virginia, he was the son of a prominent Methodist minister, and was himself ordained as a minister after earning his bachelor's and master's degrees. He later earned a second master's degree and his doctorate.
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John Paul Nazarius
1556 - 1641 (85 years)
John Paul Nazarius or Giovanni Paolo Nazari was an Italian Dominican theologian. Biography He was born at Cremona. He entered the order at an early age in his native town and from the beginning was noted for his spirituality and love of study. It is most probable that he studied philosophy and theology at the University of Bologna. He taught with great success in various schools of his order in Italy.
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Andrew White
1579 - 1656 (77 years)
Andrew White, SJ was an English Jesuit missionary who was involved in the founding of the Maryland colony. He was a chronicler of the early colony, and his writings are a primary source on the land, the Native Americans of the area, and the Jesuit mission in North America. For his efforts in converting and educating the native population, he is frequently referred to as the "Apostle of Maryland." He is considered a forefather of Georgetown University, and is memorialized in the name of its White-Gravenor building, a central location of offices and classrooms on the university's campus.
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Harry Sawyerr
1909 - 1986 (77 years)
Harry Alphonso Ebun Sawyerr MBE was a Sierra Leonean Anglican theologian and writer on African religion. He became principal of Fourah Bay College and Vice Chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone.
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Juan Maldonado
1533 - 1583 (50 years)
Juan Maldonado was a Spanish Jesuit theologian and exegete. Life At the age of fourteen or fifteen he went to the University of Salamanca, where he studied Latin with two blind professors, who, however, were men of great erudition. He also studied Greek with Hernán Núñez , philosophy with Francisco de Toledo , and theology with Padre Domingo Soto. He declared, as late as the year 1574, that he had forgotten nothing he had learned in grammar and philosophy. Having finished his course of three years in the latter of these two studies, Maldonado would have devoted himself to jurisprudence with ...
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Gerard of Bologna
Gerard of Bologna was an Italian Carmelite theologian and scholastic philosopher. A convinced Thomist, he took a doctorate in theology in 1295 at the University of Paris. Subsequently he was elected general of the Carmelite Order, in 1297.
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George Milligan
1860 - 1934 (74 years)
George Milligan DCL DD was a Scottish minister of the Church of Scotland who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1923. He was professor of divinity and biblical criticism at the University of Glasgow.
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Richard Arnald
1700 - 1756 (56 years)
Richard Arnald was a distinguished English clergyman and biblical scholar. Life He was a native of London, and received his education at Bishop Stortford School, whence he proceeded in 1714 to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. After graduating B.A., he removed to Emmanuel College, where he was elected to a fellowship on 24 June 1720, and took the degree of M.A. While resident at Emmanuel he printed two copies of Sapphics on the death of George I, and a sermon preached at Bishop Stortford school-feast on 3 August 1726. In 1733 he was presented to the living of Thurcaston in Leicestershire, an...
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Thomas Dorman
1534 - 1577 (43 years)
Thomas Dorman was an English Catholic theologian and controversialist. Exiled from England under the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, Dorman became a thought leader among the recusants, and was an early member of the English College at Douai.
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Humphrey Ely
1501 - 1604 (103 years)
Humphrey Ely, LL.D., was an English Catholic divine. Life Ely was the brother of William Ely, president of St John's College, Oxford, and was a native of Herefordshire. After studying at Brasenose College, Oxford, he was elected a scholar of St John's College in 1566. On account of his attachment to the Catholic faith he left the university without a degree. He went to the English college at Douay, where he was made a licentiate in the canon and civil laws. He appears to have been subsequently created LL.D.
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Ernst Ludwig Theodor Henke
1804 - 1872 (68 years)
Ernst Ludwig Theodor Henke , was a German theologian and historian, and the son of the theologian Heinrich Henke . He was the father of anatomist Wilhelm von Henke . From 1820, he studied at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig, then continued his education at the Universities of Göttingen and Jena, where he was influenced by Jakob Friedrich Fries and Ludwig Baumgarten-Crusius . In 1826 he received his doctorate of philosophy, later returning to Braunschweig, where he taught classes at the Collegium Carolinum. In 1833 he was appointed an associate professor of church history and exegesis a...
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Roger Goad
1538 - 1610 (72 years)
Roger Goad was an English academic theologian, Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and three times Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Life He was born at Horton, Buckinghamshire, and was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a scholar 1 September 1555, and a fellow 2 September 1558. He graduated B.A. in 1559, and commenced M.A. in 1563. On 19 January 1566 he was enjoined to study theology, and he proceeded B.D. in 1569. At this period he was master of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, where one of his pupils was George Abbot.
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Johannes Zwick
1496 - 1542 (46 years)
Johannes Zwick was a German Reformer and hymnwriter. He was born in Konstanz. He briefly hosted the Anabaptist Johannes Bünderlin in 1529. He died of the plague in Bischofszell.
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Étienne Agard de Champs
1613 - 1711 (98 years)
Étienne Agard de Champs was a French Jesuit theologian and author. Life He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1630 and later became professor of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology in Paris. He was rector at Rennes, three times rector at Paris, head of the professed house, twice provincial of France, and once provincial of Lyon.
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Maximilian Mörlin
1516 - 1584 (68 years)
Maximilian Mörlin was a Lutheran theologian, court preacher, Superintendent in Coburg, and Reformer. Life Maximilian grew up with his older brother, Joachim Mörlin, as the sons of Jodok Mörlin , the Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. After a harsh upbringing, when he learned the trade of a tailor, he switched to the profession of a scholar. Like his brother, he studied at Wittenberg in 1533 and came under the influence of Martin Luther and especially Philipp Melanchthon. From 1539, he was the pastor in Pegau and Zeitz and, after 1543, in Schalkau. On the recommendati...
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