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List of the most influential people in Theology,

#2101

Peter of Bergamo

1400 - 1482 (82 years)

Peter of Bergamo also called Peter of Almadura was an Italian Dominican theologian. Life Born in Bergamo in the early 15th century, he entered the Dominican Order in his native town, and completed his studies at the University of Bologna, where he received his degree. In the Dominican House of Studies he filled the offices of Master of Students and Bachelor of the Studium.

#2102

Peter Nead

1796 - 1877 (81 years)

Peter Nead was an American preacher in the German Baptist Brethren church that descended from the Schwarzenau Brethren. He wrote several theological works, which were influential in the Old German Baptist Brethren and related churches, perhaps the most prominent being "A Vindication of Primitive Christianity."

#2103

Simon Oomius

1628 - 1706 (78 years)

Simon Oomius or Ooms was a Dutch reformed minister and theologian. He played an important role in the Nadere Reformatie. He was born on 1 March 1630 in the village of Heenvliet, on the island of Voorne-Putten. He was the youngest of the twenty-one children of Cornelis Oomius, a preacher in Heenvliet and a native of Turnhout.

#2104

Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah

Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah al-Maghrawi al-Wahrani was an Algerian Maliki scholar of Islamic law, active in the Maghreb from the end of the fifteenth century until his death. He was identified as the author of the 1504 fatwa commonly named the Oran fatwa, instructing the Muslims in Spain about how to secretly practice Islam, and granting comprehensive dispensations for them to publicly conform to Christianity and performing acts normally forbidden in Islam when necessary to survive. Because of his authorship of the fatwa he is often referred to as "the Mufti of Oran", although he likel...

#2105

Caspar Wistar Hodge Sr.

1830 - 1891 (61 years)

Caspar Wistar Hodge Sr. was an American theologian. Like his father Charles Hodge, he taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, serving as Professor of New Testament. Hodge studied at the College of New Jersey and Princeton Seminary. He taught at the seminary from 1861 until his death.

#2106

Vitus Miletus

1549 - 1615 (66 years)

Vitus Miletus was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Life He studied at the German College, Rome, from 1567 to 1575; on 28 October 1573, as dean of the students he gave a short address before Pope Gregory XIII, when he visited the newly organized academy. He was ordained in St. John Lateran on Easter Saturday, 1575, and returned to Germany in the summer of that year; on his way home he was made doctor of theology at Bologna .

#2107

Robert Crosse

1606 - 1683 (77 years)

Robert Crosse was an English puritan theologian. Life He was son of William Crosse of Dunster, Somerset. He entered Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1621, obtained a fellowship in 1627, graduated in arts, and in 1637 proceeded B.D. Siding with the presbyterians on the outbreak of the First English Civil War, he was nominated in 1643 one of the Westminster Assembly, and took the Solemn League and Covenant.

#2108

Edward Evanson

1731 - 1805 (74 years)

Edward Evanson was a controversial English clergyman. Life He was born at Warrington, Lancashire. After graduating at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and taking holy orders, he spent several years as curate at Mitcham in Surrey. In 1768 he became vicar of South Mimms near Barnet; and in November 1769 he was presented to the rectory of Tewkesbury, with which he held also the vicarage of Longdon in Worcestershire. In the course of his studies he discovered what he thought important variance between the teaching of the Church of England and that of the Bible, and he did not conceal his convictions. ...

#2109

Gabriel Piguet

1887 - 1952 (65 years)

Gabriel Piguet was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, France. Involved in Catholic resistance to Nazism, he was imprisoned in the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp in 1944. He has been honoured as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Memorial.

#2110

Conrad Koellin

1476 - 1536 (60 years)

Conrad Koellin was a Dominican, professor of theology, and commentator on St. Thomas Aquinas. Life Conrad was born in Ulm in 1476. He entered the Dominican Order in 1492, and professed the following year. During his formative years he reports that he studied Capreolus. He entered the University of Heidelberg in 1500, and in 1507 became a master of theology, and commenced lectures on Thomas Aquinas. It was here that he wrote his line-by-line commentary on the Prima Secundae of Thomas's Summa Theologica. On July 1, 1511, he took the position of master of theology at Cologne. In 1512, at the req...

#2111

Abdul Razzaq Gilani

1134 - 1207 (73 years)

ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī , also known as Abū Bakr al-Jīlī or ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Jīlānī for short, or reverentially as Shaykh ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Jīlānī by Sunni Muslims, was a Persian Sunni Muslim Hanbali theologian, jurist, traditionalist and Sufi mystic based in Baghdad. He received his initial training in the traditional Islamic sciences from his father, Abdul-Qadir Gilani , the founder of the Qadiriyya order of Sunni mysticism, prior to setting out "on his own to attend the lectures of other prominent Hanbali scholars" in his region. He is sometimes given the Arabic honora...

#2112

Johann Hasler

1548 - 1593 (45 years)

Johann Hasler , also known as Haslerus, was a 16th-century Swiss theologian and physician. He is known for his association with a group of antitrinitarians including Johann Sylvan and Adam Neuser and for developing Galen's concept of heat and cold into the idea of a scale of temperature.

#2113

Nicolaus van Esch

1507 - 1578 (71 years)

Nicolaus van Esch was a Dutch Roman Catholic theologian and mystical writer. Life After finishing his classical studies in the school of the Hieronymites, he studied philosophy, theology, and canon law at the Catholic University of Leuven, but refused to take his doctor's degree. In 1530 he was ordained priest, and then settled in Cologne in order to devote himself to higher studies and the practice of Christian perfection.

#2114

Jan Koopmans

1905 - 1945 (40 years)

Jan Koopmans was a Dutch theologian, best known for his works De Nederlandsche Geloofsbelijdenis and Wat wij wel en wat wij niet geloven .

#2115

Johann Faber of Heilbronn

Johann Faber of Heilbronn

1504 - 1558 (54 years)

Johann Faber of Heilbronn, also known as Johannes Fabri , was a controversial 16th century Catholic preacher. He was born in Heilbronn. At the age of sixteen he entered the Dominican Order and made his ecclesiastical studies in the convent at Wimpfen. Little is known about his early preaching, but in 1534 he was invited to preach in the cathedral of Augsburg, but owing to the Lutheran tendencies of the time, and the strong anti-Catholic feeling which arose from it, the Catholic clergy were forbidden to preach, and his usefulness in Augsburg was of short duration.

#2116

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.

#2117

Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves

1800 - 1876 (76 years)

Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves FRSE was a Scottish advocate, judge, theologian and writer. He served as Solicitor General , as a judge of the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland , and as Rector of the University of St Andrews .

#2118

Benedictus Figulus

1567 - 1619 (52 years)

Benedictus Figulus of Utenhofen was a German alchemist, publisher, and Rosicrucian. He was an editor of Paracelsian texts and an important representative of Paracelsianism in the early 17th century.

#2119

José de Sigüenza

José de Sigüenza

1544 - 1606 (62 years)

José de Sigüenza was a monk of the Order of Saint Jerome , historian , poet and theologian. He was the prior of the monastery of El Escorial, where he served as both librarian and historian. He is best known for his works on ecclesiastical history, in particular his History of the Order of St. Jerome , which discusses in detail the construction of El Escorial. He also wrote a work on the life of Saint Jerome, published in 1595. He left unfinished a book on the life of Jesus that goes only as far as the adoration of the shepherds and was not printed until 1916 in three books.

#2120

Marco Vigerio della Rovere

1446 - 1516 (70 years)

Marco Vigerio della Rovere was an Italian bishop and cardinal of the Catholic Church. Biography Emmanuele Vigerio della Rovere was born in Savona in 1446, the son of Urbano Vigerio and Nicoletta Grosso della Rovere, a niece of Pope Sixtus IV.

#2121

Peter Sterry

1613 - 1672 (59 years)

Peter Sterry was an English independent theologian, associated with the Cambridge Platonists prominent during the English Civil War era. He was chaplain to Parliamentarian general Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke and then Oliver Cromwell, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and a leading radical Puritan preacher attached to the English Council of State. He was made fun of in Hudibras.

#2122

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.

#2123

Jacques Merlin

Jacques Merlin was a French theologian and book editor, best remembered for his pioneering two volume collection of church councils, the Quatuor concilia generalia printed in 1524. Jacques was born in Saint-Victurnien. He became a doctor of theology at the College of Navarre in 1499. He then taught divinity at Limoges Cathedral.

#2124

Joseph A. Johnson Jr.

1914 - 1979 (65 years)

Joseph Andrew Johnson Jr. was an African-American theologian. He was a professor of New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center and Fisk University, and a bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Mississippi and Louisiana.

#2125

John Millott Ellis

1831 - 1894 (63 years)

John Millott Ellis was a 19th-century abolitionist minister and intellectual who served as acting President of Oberlin College in 1871. He was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin from 1866 to 1896.

#2126

Candidus of Fulda

770 - 845 (75 years)

Candidus of Fulda was a Benedictine scholar of the ninth-century Carolingian Renaissance, a student of Einhard, and author of the vita of his abbot at Fulda, Eigil. Biography He received his first instruction from the learned Eigil, Abbot of Fulda, 818-822. Abbot Ratgar sent the gifted scholar to Einhard at the court of Charlemagne, where he most probably learned the art he employed later in decorating with pictures the western apse of St. Salvator, the so-called Ratgerbasilica, to which, in 819, the remains of Saint Boniface were transferred. When Rabanus Maurus was made abbot , Candidus may have succeeded him as head of the monastic school of Fulda.

#2127

Cecil Weir

1897 - 1995 (98 years)

Cecil James Mullo Weir was a Scottish academic and theologian, who was Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at the University of Glasgow from 1937 until 1968. Life Weir was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 4 December 1897. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, with his university studies at the University of Edinburgh being interrupted by service with the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War between 1917 and 1919 in France, Belgium and in Germany. After the war, he returned to university and was awarded a first-class Master of Arts degree in classics 1923. He obtained a further first-class degree in Semitic Languages in 1925.

#2128

Boverius

1568 - 1638 (70 years)

Giovanni Boveri was an Italian jurist, who became a Capuchin Friar Minor, taking the name Zacharias. He is known as a historian and theologian. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia he was a “man of great learning not only as an historian, but as a controversial writer”.

#2129

Felix Fabri

1441 - 1502 (61 years)

Felix Fabri was a Swiss Dominican theologian. He left vivid and detailed descriptions of his pilgrimages to Palestine and also in 1489 authored a book on the history of Swabia, entitled Historia Suevorum.

#2130

Samuel Drew

1765 - 1833 (68 years)

Samuel Drew was a British Methodist theologian. A native of Cornwall, England, he was nicknamed the "Cornish metaphysician" for his works on the human soul, the nature of God, and the deity of Christ. He also wrote on historical and biographical themes.

#2131

Jacobus Zaffius

Jacobus Zaffius

1534 - 1618 (84 years)

Jacobus Hendriksz Zaffius also known as Saffius or Saffio , was a Catholic pastor in Haarlem. Biography He was born in Amsterdam where he later owned some property. From 1568 he was Prior of the Canons Regular monastery De Blinken in Heiloo. In May 1571 he became provost of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem. He witnessed the Satisfactie van Haarlem in 1577, as well as the Alteratie of Amsterdam on 26 May, 1578. Three days after this, Calvinists plundered the Grote Kerk and two years later Zaffius went to jail for refusing to turn over Catholic property to the Haarlem city council. William the Silent granted him amnesty, and it was on this occasion that he made his donation to the Frans Loenenhofje.

#2132

Robert Arnot

1744 - 1808 (64 years)

Robert Arnot was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and professor of divinity in St Andrews University, who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1794. Early life Arnot studied and was licensed by Cupar Presbytery on 5 Sept 1769. He was ordained minister at the parish of Ceres, Fife on 30 August 1770, where he oversaw that parish's report for the Statistical Account of Scotland. He was elected clerk to the presbytery in December 1777. He resigned this post on 16 October 1792 to take up his post as professor of divinity at New College, . This had been achieved as a...

#2133

Ferdinand Geminian Wanker

1758 - 1824 (66 years)

Ferdinand Geminian Wanker was a German Roman Catholic moral theologian. Life Works Christliche Sittenlehre oder Unterricht vom Verhalten des Christen, um durch Tugend wahrhaft glücklich zu werden. 2 Bände. 1794. Band 1. Vierte Ausgabe. 1824. Band 2. Dritte Ausgabe. 1811.Vorlesungen über Religion nach Vernunft und Offenbarung. Für Akademiker und gebildete Christen. 1828Gesammelte Schriften. 4 Bände. 1830.

#2134

Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania

1545 - 1609 (64 years)

Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania or Gian Lorenzo d'Anania was an Italian geographer and theologian. Biography Little is known for certain of d'Anania's life. His dates of birth and death are uncertain. He was born in Taverna, a city in the province of Catanzaro in Sila Piccola. He later studied natural science, languages and theology, probably in Naples. He certainly lived there for a few years and served as the teacher of the Archbishop Mario Carafa. At Carafa's death on 11 September 1575, d'Anania returned to Taverna where he remained until his death .

#2135

Radulfus Ardens

1101 - 1200 (99 years)

Radulfus Ardens was a French theologian and early scholastic philosopher of the 12th century. He was born in Beaulieu, Poitou. He is known for his Summa de vitiis et virtutibus or Speculum universale . It is in 14 volumes and is a systematic work of theology and ethics.

#2136

Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās

1200 - 1261 (61 years)

Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Yahya bin Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Sayyid al-Nas al-Ya'mari, better known as Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, was a Medieval Muslim theologian. He was the grandfather of Fatḥ al-Din Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, though he died before ever meeting his grandson.

#2137

John Beston

John Beston was an English theological writer, prior of the Carmelite convent at Bishop's Lynn, was doctor in theology both of Cambridge and Paris, and was highly esteemed as a theologian and a philosopher, and also as a preacher.

#2138

Henry Highton

1816 - 1874 (58 years)

Henry Highton was an English schoolmaster and clergyman, Principal of Cheltenham College, known also as a scientific and theological writer. Life He was born at Leicester, the eldest son of Henry Highton. He spent five years at Rugby School, under Thomas Arnold, and matriculated at The Queen's College, Oxford, 13 March 1834. After leaving school, he continued on close terms with Arnold. Highton proceeded B.A. in 1837 , obtaining a first-class in classics, and was Michel fellow of his college in 1840–1. At this period he was tutor to Henry John Stephen Smith, and curate of St Ebbe's Church, Ox...

#2139

Ibn Abbad al-Rundi

1333 - 1390 (57 years)

Ibn Abbad al-Rundi was one of the leading Sufi theologianss of his time who was born in Ronda. Attracted to Morocco by the famous madrasahs, Ibn Abbad emigrated there at an early age. He spent most of his life in Morocco, living in different cities , and was buried in Bab al-Futuh cemetery in Fes.

#2140

Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo

1404 - 1470 (66 years)

Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo was a Spanish churchman, historian and political theorist. A learned Spanish bishop, after studying law at Salamanca for ten years and there graduating as Doctor, he became secretary to John II of Castile, and Henry IV of Castile. They employed him as envoy on various missions, notably to the Holy See apropos of the Council of Basle, whose conciliarist theories he opposed. While on a mission to the Holy Roman Empire, he was addressed in a letter by Nicholas of Cusa setting forth the latter's theory of explicatio Petri, the unfolding of the Church from Peter.

#2141

Dawson Dawson-Walker

1868 - 1934 (66 years)

Dawson Dawson-Walker was a British Church of England clergyman, classicist, theologian and academic. From 1911 to 1919, he was Principal of St John's College, Durham. From 1919 to his death in 1934, he was Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham University and a Canon Residentiary of Durham Cathedral.

#2142

Justus Menius

1499 - 1558 (59 years)

Justus Menius was a German Lutheran pastor and Protestant reformer whose name is Latinized from Jost or Just Menig. Early life Menius was born in Fulda to poor but respectable parents. Entering the University of Erfurt in 1514, he received his bachelor's degree in 1515 and his master's degree in 1516. At this time, in association with the keen humanists Conrad Mutian, Crotus Rubeanus, and Eoban Hess, Menius became more sceptical. Moving to Wittenberg in 1519, he became evangelical under the teaching of Philipp Melanchthon and the preaching of Martin Luther.

#2143

Girolamo Dandini

1552 - 1634 (82 years)

Girolamo Dandini was an Italian Jesuit and academic. Life He was born in Cesena. With Juan Maldonado he was the first Jesuit professor in Paris, at the Collège de Clermont; there he taught François de Sales. Later he was professor of theology at Perugia.

#2144

Henry Pendleton

Henry Pendleton was an English churchman, a theologian and controversialist. Life He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity, 18 July 1552. Though he had preached against Lutheranism in Henry VIII's reign, he conformed under Edward VI and was appointed by Lord Derby as an itinerant Protestant preacher. In 1552 he received the living of Blymhill, Staffordshire.

#2145

Chrysostomos I of Athens

Chrysostomos I of Athens

1868 - 1938 (70 years)

Chrysostomos A , born Chrysostomos Papadopoulos , was Metropolitan of Athens from 8 March until 31 December 1923, when he became the first Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, serving until his death on 22 October 1938.

#2146

Charles Abel Heurtley

1806 - 1895 (89 years)

Charles Abel Heurtley was an English theologian. Heurtley was educated at Louth Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, of which college he was a Fellow from 1832 to 1841 when he became Rector of Fenny Compton. He was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1853 until his death.

#2147

Everard Digby

1550 - 1605 (55 years)

Everard Digby was an English academic theologian, expelled as a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge for reasons that were largely religious. He is known as the author of a 1587 book, written in Latin, that was the first work published in England on swimming; and also as a philosophical teacher, writer and controversialist. The swimming book, De Arte Natandi, was a practical treatise following a trend begun by the archery book Toxophilus of Roger Ascham, of Digby's own college.

#2148

Edward Jones

1641 - 1703 (62 years)

Edward Jones , was a Welsh Anglican bishop who served as Bishop of Cloyne and Bishop of St Asaph. Jones was born in July 1641 at Llwyn Ririd, near Montgomery, Powys. He was the son of Richard Jones, by Sarah, daughter of John Pyttes of Marrington. He was educated at Westminster School, whence he was elected in 1661 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1664, and M.A. in 1668, and was made fellow of his college in 1667. Going to Ireland as domestic chaplain to the Duke of Ormonde, the lord-lieutenant, he was appointed master of Kilkenny College, where Jonathan Swift was his pupil....

#2149

Antonius Thysius the Elder

1565 - 1640 (75 years)

Antonius Thysius was a Dutch Reformed theologian, professor at the University of Harderwijk and University of Leiden. Life He was born on 9 August 1565 in Antwerp, and received a classical education under Bonaventura Vulcanius. In 1581 he followed his teacher to Leiden, where he studied theology under Lambertus Danaeus; Danaeus left for Ghent after a year, and Thysius spent some years travelling, to Frankenthal, Geneva where he was taught by Theodore Beza, then other Swiss cities, and Strasbourg. He was for four years in Heidelberg, and in 1589 went on to England, where he heard in Oxford and Cambridge William Whitaker and John Rainolds.

#2150

John Ireland

1435 - 1500 (65 years)

John Ireland or Irland , also known as Johannes de Irlandia, was a Scottish theologian and diplomat. Life A native of Scotland , Ireland was first at St Andrews University but left in 1459 without a degree and joined the University of Paris as student and teacher. According to his own testimony he remained in France, "neare the tyme of thretty yere". Records of the Sorbonne suggest he came from a St Andrews family, although Perth has been suggested as his birthplace. Ireland settled in Paris, and became a doctor of the Sorbonne. As Johannes de Hirlandia he served as Rector of the University of...

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