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
Heinrich Heppe
1820 - 1879 (59 years)
Heinrich Ludwig Julius Heppe was a German Calvinist theologian and church historian. In 1844 he earned his doctorate from the University of Marburg, where he was a student of Orientalist Hermann Hupfeld . From 1845 he served as a pastor at St. Martin Church in Kassel. In 1850 he became an associate professor of theology at Marburg, where he attained full professorship in 1864.
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Jean du Vergier de Hauranne
1581 - 1643 (62 years)
Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, the Abbé of Saint-Cyran, was a French Catholic priest who introduced Jansenism into France. Life Born in the city of Bayonne to a family of Gascon and Basque merchants, Vergier studied with the Jesuits of Agen. At the age of sixteen he was sent to study at the Sorbonne, and then took up theology at the Catholic University of Leuven. There he formed a friendship with Cornelius Jansen and, as the wealthier of the two, became Jansen's patron for a number of years, getting Jansen a job as a tutor in 1606. Two years later, he obtained for Jansen a position teaching at the episcopal college back in Bayonne.
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P. Chenchiah
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Pandipeddi Chenchiah , spelt also as Pandippedi Chenchiah, a first generation indigenous convert to Christianity, was a jurist, South Indian Christian theologian, and radical thinker of Rethinking Christianity in India group for Indianisation of Christianity. He published Rethinking Christianity in India, as an Indian Christian answer to the Hendrik Kraemer's The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World.
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Giovanni Diodati
1576 - 1649 (73 years)
Giovanni Diodati or Deodati was a Genevan-born Italian Calvinist theologian and translator. His translation of the Bible into Italian from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac sources became the reference version used by Italian Protestants.
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Albert Eichhorn
1856 - 1926 (70 years)
Karl Albert August Ludwig Eichhorn was a German Protestant theologian. He was the author of Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament and one of the founders of the history of religions school, an approach that sought to understand all religions, including Christianity and Judaism, as socio-cultural phenomena that developed in comparable ways. His pioneering work on the role of the contemporary needs, beliefs, and culture that shaped the New Testament reports of the Last Supper argued that this early Christian sacramental meal reflected the influence of Near Eastern gnostic ideas.
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Johann Baptista Baltzer
1803 - 1871 (68 years)
Johann Baptista Baltzer was a German Catholic theologian. Biography He was born at Andernach, and studied at the University of Bonn, which he left in 1827. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1829, he received a degree of D.D. from the University of Munich in 1830, and also was made professor of theology at the University of Breslau in that year. He was at first an enthusiastic follower of Georg Hermes in his attempt to reconcile the newer German philosophy with the Roman Catholic teaching, but definitely broke with his school in 1839 and associated himself with the speculations of Ant...
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Francisco Javier Quintanilla
1833 - Present (193 years)
Francisco Javier Quintanilla was a Chilean priest. Born in Rancagua, he did his ecclesiastical studies at the Seminario Conciliar in Santiago. He published two notable religious works, Tradicionalismo and Historia de la Teolojia. He was a member of the Faculty of Theology and Sacred Sciences at the University of Chile.
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Charles Williams
1886 - 1945 (59 years)
Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.
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Erich Schaeder
1861 - 1936 (75 years)
Erich Schaeder was a German Protestant theologian. He studied theology at the universities of Berlin and Greifswald, where in 1891 he qualified as a lecturer. In 1894 he became an associate professor of theology at the University of Königsberg, and later on, served as a full professor at the universities of Kiel and Breslau .
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Julius Guttmann
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
Julius Guttmann , born Yitzchak Guttmann , was a German-born rabbi, Jewish theologian, and philosopher of religion. Biography Julius was born to Jakob Guttmann while Jakob served as Chief Rabbi at Hildesheim during the years 1874 to 1892, when Hildesheim still had a large Jewish population. Jakob himself published papers on a number of philosophical topics. The family moved to Breslau in 1880.
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Peter Joseph Elvenich
1796 - 1886 (90 years)
Peter Joseph Elvenich was a German Catholic theologian and philosopher born in Embken, a village that today is part of Nideggen, North Rhine-Westphalia. He was a principal supporter and defender of Hermesianism, a theological belief system based on the teachings of Georg Hermes .
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John Leland
1754 - 1841 (87 years)
John Leland was an American Baptist minister who preached in Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as an outspoken abolitionist. He was an important figure in the struggle for religious liberty in the United States. Leland also later opposed the rise of missionary societies among Baptists.
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Samuel Miller
1769 - 1850 (81 years)
Samuel Miller was a Presbyterian theologian who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography Samuel Miller was born in Dover, Delaware, on October 31, 1769. His father was the Rev. John Miller . Miller attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1789. He earned his license to preach in 1791, and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him a Doctorate of Divinity degree in 1804. From 1813 to 1849, he served as Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government at Princeton Theological Seminary, and was also integral in founding the institution.
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Pope Anastasius I
340 - 401 (61 years)
Pope Anastasius I was the bishop of Rome from 27 November 399 to his death on 19 December 401. Anastasius was born in Rome, and was the son of Maximus. He succeeded Siricius as Pope and condemned the writings of the Alexandrian theologian Origen shortly after their translation into Latin. He fought against these writings throughout his papacy, and in 400 he called a council to discuss them. The council agreed that Origen was not faithful to the Church.
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Hugh Pope
1869 - 1946 (77 years)
Henry Vincent Pope, better known as Fr. Hugh Pope , was an English Dominican biblical scholar, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome.
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Christoph Daniel Ebeling
1741 - 1817 (76 years)
Christoph Daniel Ebeling was a scholar of Germany who studied the geography and history of North America. Biography Ebeling was born near Hildesheim, Hanover. He studied theology at Göttingen, but devoted himself to geographical studies, and for 33 years taught history and Greek in the Hamburg gymnasium. He was also superintendent of the Hamburg library, and collected about 10,000 maps and nearly 4,000 books relating to America. Ebeling's magnum opus was a Geography and History of North America , forming a continuation of Büsching's General Geography. He received a vote of thanks from the Uni...
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Stevan Dimitrijević
1866 - 1953 (87 years)
Stevan Dimitrijević was a Serbian theologian, historian and pastor to Chetnik freedom-fighter in Ottoman-occupied Old Serbia and Macedonia during the beginning of the 20th century. Biography He graduated from the theology department of the University of Belgrade and the Kiev Theological Academy. Upon his return in 1894 he was a professor in Skopje and Salonica, the rector of the Theology school in Prizren, a full-time professor of the University of Belgrade from 1920 to 1936 and the founder and first dean of the Theological Faculty in Belgrade. His students include bishop Nikolaj Velimirović,...
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Jakub Wujek
1541 - 1597 (56 years)
Jakub Wujek was a Polish Jesuit, religious writer, Doctor of Theology, Vice-Chancellor of the Vilnius Academy and translator of the Bible into Polish. He is well-known for his translation of the Bible into Polish: the Wujek Bible.
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John Eadie
1810 - 1876 (66 years)
John Eadie was a Scottish theologian and biblical critic. Life He was born at Alva in Stirlingshire . Having studied the arts curriculum at the University of Glasgow, he studied for the ministry at the Divinity Hall of the United Secession Church, a dissenting body which, on its union a few years later with the Relief Church, adopted the title the United Presbyterian Church.
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Norbert of Xanten
1080 - 1134 (54 years)
Norbert of Xanten, O. Praem , also known as Norbert Gennep, was a bishop of the Catholic Church, founder of the Premonstratensian order of canons regular, and is venerated as a saint. Norbert was canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582, and his statue appears above the Piazza colonnade of St. Peter's Square in Rome.
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Zygmunt Łoziński
1870 - 1932 (62 years)
Zygmunt Łoziński was a Polish Roman Catholic bishop who served as the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev that later was aggregated to the Diocese of Pinsk. Soviet authorities arrested him on two occasions during his episcopate.
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Zacharias Ursinus
1534 - 1583 (49 years)
Zacharias Ursinus was a sixteenth-century German Reformed theologian and Protestant reformer, born Zacharias Baer in Breslau . He became the leading theologian of the Reformed Protestant movement of the Palatinate, serving both at the University of Heidelberg and the College of Wisdom . He is best known as the principal author and interpreter of the Heidelberg Catechism.
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Benedict Pictet
1655 - 1724 (69 years)
Benedict Pictet was a Genevan Reformed theologian. Life He was born at Geneva on 19 May 1655. After receiving a university education there, he made an extensive tour of Europe. He then assumed pastoral duties at Geneva, and in 1686 was appointed professor of theology. He died there on 10 January 1724, at the age of 68. Pictet was a nephew of Francis Turretin, who called him to "his bedside when dying, not his son," and Pictect preached his uncle's funeral sermon.
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Johann Friedrich
1836 - 1917 (81 years)
Johann Friedrich was a German theologian. He was prominent as a leader of the Old Catholics. Biography He was born at Poxdorf in Upper Franconia, and was educated at Bamberg and at the University of Munich. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1859. In 1865, he was appointed extraordinary professor of theology. In 1867, he was appointed to the Academy of Sciences. He was a pupil of Ignaz von Döllinger.
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Rudolf Ewald Stier
1800 - 1862 (62 years)
Rudolf Ewald Stier , was a German Protestant churchman and mystic. Stier was born at Fraustadt in South Prussia and studied at the University of Halle and Humboldt University, Berlin, first law and afterwards theology; he continued his theological studies later at the pastoral seminary of Wittenberg. In 1824 he was made professor at the Missionary Institute in Basel. Afterwards he held pastorates at Frankleben near Merseburg and at Wichlinghausen . In 1850 he was appointed superintendent at Schkeuditz, and in 1859 at Eisleben.
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Franz Anton Knittel
1721 - 1792 (71 years)
Franz Anton Knittel was a German, Lutheran orthodox theologian, priest, and palaeographer. He examined palimpsests' text of the Codex Guelferbytanus 64 Weissenburgensis and deciphered text of Codex Carolinus. He was the author of many works.
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Johann Heinrich Kurtz
1809 - 1890 (81 years)
Johann Heinrich Kurtz was a German Lutheran theologian. Kurtz was born in Monschau near Aachen and educated at Halle and Bonn. Abandoning the idea of a commercial career, he gave himself to the study of theology and became religious instructor at the gymnasium of Mitau in 1835, and ordinary professor of theology at Dorpat. He resigned his chair in 1870 and went to live at Marburg.
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Hans Tausen
1494 - 1561 (67 years)
Hans Tausen a.k.a the Danish Luther was the leading Lutheran theologian of the Danish Reformation in Denmark. He served as Bishop of Ribe and published the first translation of the Pentateuch into Danish in 1535.
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Natanael Beskow
1865 - 1953 (88 years)
Fredrik Natanael Beskow was a Swedish theologian and school headmaster. He was also active as a preacher, writer, artist, pacifist and social activist. Beskow published a number of collections of sermons. He also made substantial contributions as a hymn writer.
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Francesco Morano
1872 - 1968 (96 years)
Francesco Morano was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Secretary of the Apostolic Signatura in the Roman Curia from 1935 until 1959, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1959.
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Max Kadushin
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
Max Kadushin was a Conservative rabbi best known for his organic philosophy of rabbinics. Biography Born in Minsk, Max Kadushin grew up in Seattle; his father operated a store for gold miners going to the Klondike. Kadushin came to New York in 1912. After graduating from New York University and getting a B.A. in 1912, Kadushin studied for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and was ordained in 1920. There he encountered Mordecai Kaplan and soon became a key figure in Kaplan's Reconstructionist Judaism movement. As his studies in aggadah continued during the late 1920s,...
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Gottfrid Billing
1841 - 1925 (84 years)
Axel Gottfrid Leonard Billing was a Swedish cleric and theologian who served as a member of the Swedish Academy, member of the Första kammaren in the Riksdag and Bishop of Lund from 1898 until 1925.
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Henry Owen
1716 - 1795 (79 years)
Henry Owen was a Welsh theologian and biblical scholar. In biblical scholarship he discussed the date of publication and the form and manner of the composition of the four canonical gospel accounts.
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John Jay Butler
1814 - Present (212 years)
John Jay Butler was an ordained minister and theologian in the early Free Will Baptist movement in New England, serving as Professor of Systematic Theology at Cobb Divinity School at Bates College in Maine and later at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
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Samuel Przypkowski
1592 - 1670 (78 years)
Samuel Przypkowski was a Polish Socinian theologian, a leading figure in the Polish Brethren and an advocate of religious toleration. In Dissertatio de pace et concordia ecclesiae, published in 1628 in Amsterdam, he called for mutual tolerance by Christians. He was also a poet in Latin and Polish.
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Frederick William Faber
1814 - 1863 (49 years)
Frederick William Faber was a noted English hymnwriter and theologian, who converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1845. He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood subsequently in 1847. His best-known work is the hymn "Faith of Our Fathers".
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Thomas Fuller
1608 - 1661 (53 years)
Thomas Fuller was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen .
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August Wilhelm Dieckhoff
1823 - 1894 (71 years)
August Wilhelm Dieckhoff was a German Lutheran theologian known for his studies on the history of evangelical doctrine during the Reformation. In 1850 he obtained his habilitation from the University of Göttingen, and several years later became an associate professor of systematic and historical theology . In 1860 he was appointed professor of historical theology at the University of Rostock. In 1887 he was named rector of the university. From 1860 to 1864, with Theodor Kliefoth, he edited the Theologische Zeitschrift.
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Pope Urban V
1310 - 1370 (60 years)
Pope Urban V , born Guillaume de Grimoard, was the head of the Catholic Church from 28 September 1362 until his death, in December 1370 and was also a member of the Order of Saint Benedict. He was the only Avignon pope to be beatified.
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Benjamin Keach
1640 - 1704 (64 years)
Benjamin Keach was an English Reformed Baptist preacher and author whose name was given to Keach's Catechism. Biography Keach was born on 29 February 1640 to John and Fedora Keeche at Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire. His parents were poor. Keach worked as a tailor during his early years. He was baptized at the age of 15 by John Russell, the minister of an Arminian Baptist church at Chesham, Buckinghamshire. In 1659, at the age of 18, Keach began preaching, and was the minister of the congregation at Winslow. The next year, the Stuart Restoration returned Charles II to the throne of England, and in the years that followed, the penal laws proscribed Protestant nonconformity.
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Park Yun-sun
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Park Yun-Sun was a Korean biblical scholar born in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province. After completing his undergraduate studies at Soongsil University, he enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary in the US. Then, he went on to Holland for further theological training . In 1979, he completed his voluminous and historic scholarly work on the commentaries of all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. Park has been considered to be the pre-eminent Calvin scholar in Korea. He taught at Kosin University , Chongshin University , and Hapdong Theological Seminary . He introduced to Koreans the works of C.
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Friedrich Samuel Bock
1716 - 1786 (70 years)
Friedrich Samuel Bock was a German philosopher and theologian. In 1753 he was appointed first professor of Greek, then theology at the University of Königsberg, though he resigned both positions in 1770 due to the university's failure to pay a salary, plus the onerous duty that the professor of Greek had to lecture on the whole of the New Testament annually.
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Michel Le Quien
1661 - 1733 (72 years)
Michel Le Quien was a French historian and theologian. He studied at Plessis College, Paris, and at twenty entered the Dominican convent in Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he made his profession in 1682. Excepting occasional short absences he never left Paris. At the time of his death he was librarian of the convent in Rue Saint-Honoré, a position which he had filled almost all his life, lending assistance to those who sought information on theology and ecclesiastical antiquity. Under the supervision of Père Marsollier he mastered the classical languages, Arabic and Hebrew, to the detriment, it...
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Johann Lorenz von Mosheim
1693 - 1755 (62 years)
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim or Johann Lorenz Mosheim was a German Lutheran church historian. Biography He was born at Lübeck on 9 October 1693 or 1694. After studying at the gymnasium of Lübeck, he entered the University of Kiel , where he took his master's degree in 1718. In 1719 he became assessor in the philosophical faculty at Kiel.
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Josip Juraj Strossmayer
1815 - 1905 (90 years)
Josip Juraj Strossmayer, also Štrosmajer was a Croatian politician, Roman Catholic bishop, and benefactor. Early life and rise as a cleric Strossmayer was born in Osijek to a Croatian family. His great-grandfather was an ethnic German immigrant from Styria who had married a Croatian woman. He finished school at a gymnasium in Osijek, and then graduated theology at the Catholic seminary in Đakovo. He earned a PhD in philosophy at a high seminary in Budapest, at the age of 20.
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Guy Hershberger
1896 - 1989 (93 years)
Guy F. Hershberger was an American Mennonite theologian, educator, historian, and prolific author particularly in the field of Mennonite ethics. Life Born in Johnson County, Iowa, to Ephraim D. and Dorinda Kempf Hershberger, Hershberger was one of nine children. He was baptized in 1909 at his home congregation of East Union Amish Mennonite Church, where Sanford Calvin Yoder was pastor. He began work as an educator immediately out of high school in 1915 as a teacher in rural schools, where he remained for five years until his marriage to Clara Hooley on 1 August 1920. They had two children who survived into adulthood; Elizabeth , born in 1924, and Paul, born 1934.
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Francis Xavier Schmalzgrueber
1663 - 1735 (72 years)
Francis Xavier Schmalzgrueber was a German Jesuit canonist. Schmalzgrueber was born at Griesbach, Bavaria. Entering the Society of Jesus in 1679, he made his studies at Ingolstadt, obtaining the doctorate both in theology and canon law. He taught humanities at Munich, Dillingen, and Neuburg; philosophy at Mindelheim, Augsburg, and Ingolstadt; dogmatic theology at Innsbruck and Lucerne. From 1703 to 1716 he was professor of canon law, alternating between Dillingen and Ingolstadt. He was twice chancellor of the University of Dillingen; for two years censor of books for the Jesuits at Rome, and for a like period prefect of studies at Munich.
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Hans Hinrich Wendt
1853 - 1928 (75 years)
Hans Hinrich Wendt was a German Protestant theologian. Life After studying theology at Leipzig, Göttingen and Tübingen, he became in 1885 professor ordinarius of systematic theology at Heidelberg, and in 1893 was called to Jena. His work on the teaching of Jesus made him widely known. He also edited several editions of the Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles in Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer's series. In May 1904 he delivered two addresses in London on The Idea and Reality of Revelation, and Typical Forms of Christianity, as the Essex Hall Lectures .
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Gerhard Wolter Molanus
1633 - 1722 (89 years)
Gerhard Wolter Molanus was Lutheran theologian and abbot of Loccum. Biography He studied theology at Helmstedt; and in 1659 was appointed professor of mathematics and theology at University of Rinteln. 1671 Molanus became conventual of a Lutheran Loccum Abbey and 1672 coadjutor of the abbot. There he lived in celibacy according to the Rule of St. Benedict. In 1674 Duke John Frederick called him to Hanover as director of the consistory after Justus Gesenius . 1677 he became abbot of Loccum under title Gerhard I, one of the most influential offices in the duchy.
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Tilman Pesch
1836 - 1899 (63 years)
Tilman Pesch , was a German Jesuit philosopher. Life He became a Jesuit on 15 October 1852, and made his novitiate at Friedrichsburg near Münster; he studied classics two years at Paderborn, philosophy two years at Bonn; taught four years at Feldkirch, Austria; studied theology one year at Paderborn and three years at Maria-Laach, after which he made his third year of novitiate at Paderborn. He then taught philosophy at Maria-Laach . From 1870 to 1876 he worked in the ministry, and again taught philosophy eight years , at the Castle of Bleijenbeek in Afferden.
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