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 Theology,
#2201
John Mainwaring
1724 - 1807 (83 years)
John Mainwaring was an English theologian and the first biographer of the composer Georg Friedrich Händel in any language. He was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and parish priest, and later a professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
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Theophil Großgebauer
1627 - 1661 (34 years)
Theophil Großgebauer was a German Lutheran theologian active at the University of Rostock, most notable for his work Wächterstimme aus dem verwüsteten Zion. Sources http://www.theologie.uni-rostock.de/index.php?id=3551
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Antonino Diana
1585 - 1663 (78 years)
Antonino Diana was a Catholic moral theologian. Biography Diana was born of a noble family at Palermo, Sicily. A famous casuist, he was a consultor of the Holy Office of the Kingdom of Sicily and an examiner of bishops under Urban VIII, Innocent X, and Alexander VII.
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Juan Bautista de Lezana
1586 - 1659 (73 years)
Juan Bautista de Lezana was a Spanish Carmelite theologian. Lezana was an authority on canon law, dogmatic theology, and philosophy; his historical works are not of the same standard. Life Lezana was born at Madrid. He took the habit at Alberca, in Old Castile, on 18 October 1600, and made his profession at the house of the Carmelites of the Old Observance, at Madrid, in 1602. He studied philosophy at Toledo, theology at Salamanca, partly at the college of the order, partly at the university under Juan Marquez, and finally at Alcalá under Luis de Montesion.
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Benjamin Francis Hayes
1830 - 1906 (76 years)
Benjamin Francis Hayes was a Free Will Baptist pastor, author, principal of the Lapham Institute, and early professor at Bates College in Maine. Benjamin Hayes was born in New Gloucester, Maine in 1830 to Mary Hayes and Rev. Jesse Hayes, a Baptist minister. Benjamin Hayes graduated from Bowdoin College in 1855 and received an M.A. from Bowdoin in 1858. He then taught at the Free Will Baptist Theological Seminary at the New Hampton Institute before becoming a pastor in Olneyville, Rhode Island in 1859 and serving until 1863 when he became principal of the Lapham Institute in Scituate, Rhode Island serving until 1865, when he became a professor at Bates College.
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Anthim the Iberian
1650 - 1716 (66 years)
Anthim the Iberian was a Georgian theologian, scholar, calligrapher, philosopher and one of the greatest ecclesiastic figures of Wallachia, led the printing press of the prince of Wallachia, and was Metropolitan of Bucharest in 1708–1715.
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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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Melchior Teschner
1584 - 1635 (51 years)
Melchior Teschner was a German cantor, composer and theologian. Born in Wschowa in Poland, Teschner attended the Gymnasium in Zittau, Saxony, and studied under Johann Klee. In 1602 he began studies in music theory, philosophy and theology with Bartholomäus Gesius at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder
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Dumitru Cornilescu
1891 - 1975 (84 years)
Dumitru Cornilescu was a Romanian archdeacon who produced a popular translation of the Bible into Romanian, published in 1921. Although referred to as "Father Cornilescu", he was never ordained as a Romanian Orthodox priest. After his conversion, he served as a Protestant minister. Cornilescu's translation is the most popular version of the Bible among Romanian Protestants.
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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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Peter of Poitiers
1130 - 1205 (75 years)
Peter of Poitiers was a French scholastic theologian, born in Poitiers around 1125-1130. He died in Paris on September 3, 1205. Life After his studies in Paris, he began teaching in the Faculty of Theology in 1167. Two years later he succeeded Peter Comestor in the chair of scholastic theology at the cathedral school of Notre Dame.
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Isaac J. Lansing
1846 - 1920 (74 years)
Isaac J. Lansing was the president of Clark Atlanta University from 1874 to 1876, and the pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts from 1893 to 1897. Isaac Lansing was born in 1846 in Watervliet, New York. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1872 as valedictorian and was a graduate student there from 1872 to 1873. He received a master's degree from the university in 1875. He served as a Methodist Episcopal minister in the New York East, Georgia, and Savannah Conferences from 1873 to 1886. During this period, Lansing was appointed President of Clark Atlanta University in 1874 and served until 1876.
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Albert Frick
1714 - 1776 (62 years)
Albert Frick was a German theologian. He was born at Ulm on 18 September 1714 and died on 30 May 1776. He studied at Leipsic, and was appointed assessor to the faculty of theology. In 1743 he became a minister at Jungingen, but, returning to Ulm in 1744, filled the post of librarian and professor of morals. In 1751 he went to Munster as a preacher; and in 1768 was named head librarian. Among his writings are Historia traditionum ex monumentis Ecclesiae Christianae : — De Natura et Constitutione Theologie Catecheticae . — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, 18:871.
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Joseph R. N. Maxwell
1899 - 1971 (72 years)
Joseph Raymond Nonnatus Maxwell, SJ was an American Catholic priest, academic, poet, and college administrator. A Jesuit since 1919, he served as President of the College of the Holy Cross from 1939 to 1945, and President of Boston College from 1951 to 1958.
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Joseph Baylee
1808 - 1883 (75 years)
Joseph Tyrrell Baylee, D.D. , was a theological writer. Baylee received his education at Trinity College Dublin . To the residents of Liverpool and Birkenhead his name became for a quarter of a century a household word, on account of his activity as the founder and first principal of St. Aidan's Theological College, Birkenhead, where he prepared many students for the work of the ministry. This institution, which may be said to have been founded in 1846, originated in a private theological class conducted by Dr. Baylee, under the sanction of the Bishop of Chester, Dr. Sumner, afterwards advance...
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Luther Tracy Townsend
1838 - 1922 (84 years)
Reverend Luther Tracy Townsend was a professor at Boston University and an author of theological and historical works. Biography He was born on September 27, 1838, in Orono, Maine, to Luther K. Townsend and Mary True Call. His father died on November 16, 1839, and his mother took the family to New Hampshire. He started work at the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad in 1850. He infrequently attended the New Hampshire Conference Seminary, now known as the Tilton School. He graduated from Dartmouth College with an A.B. in 1859. He then attended Andover Theological Seminary and graduated in 1862.
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Alphons Bellesheim
1839 - 1912 (73 years)
Christian Peter "Alphons" Maria Joseph Bellesheim was a church historian. He also reviewed and collected books. Family Alphons was the son of Heinrich "Wilhelm" Ludwig Joseph Bellesheim and Maria Anna "Margaretha" Dumesnil . His parents were married on 27 June 1838 in Monschau, Germany. Alphons' paternal grandparents were Carl Anton Bellesheim and Maria Josepha Helena Hennekes. His maternal grandparents were Carl Dumesnil and Christina Windhagen.
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Justus Gesenius
1601 - 1673 (72 years)
Justus Gesenius was a Lutheran theologian of the seventeenth century, known for his catechisms. His father was preacher at Esbeck. Having received his early education at the Adreanum in Hildesheim, he went in his eighteenth year to the University of Helmstedt, where he studied under Georg Calixtus and Conrad Horneius. In 1628 he took his degree of master of philosophy in Jena and was called as pastor to the church of St. Magnus in Brunswick. After seven years of beneficent activity there, he received a call to Hildesheim, the seat of George, duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, as court chaplain and preacher in the Collegiate of St.
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Thomas Stapleton
1535 - 1598 (63 years)
Thomas Stapleton was an English Catholic priest and controversialist. Life He was the son of William Stapleton, one of the Stapletons of Carlton, Yorkshire. He was educated at the Free School, Canterbury, at Winchester College, and at New College, Oxford, where he became a Fellow, 18 January 1553. On Elizabeth I's accession he left England rather than conform to the new religion, going first to Leuven, and afterwards to Paris, to study theology.
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Francesco Silvestri
1474 - 1528 (54 years)
Francesco Silvestri, O.P. was an Italian Dominican theologian. He wrote a notable commentary on Thomas of Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles, and served as Master General of his order from 1525 until his death.
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Newcome Cappe
1733 - 1800 (67 years)
Newcome Cappe , was an English unitarian divine. He served as the pastor of the York Unitarian Chapel, located in York, England. Cappe published various sermons and after his death his second wife, Catharine Cappe published many more.
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William Upton Richards
1811 - 1873 (62 years)
William Upton Richards was an English Anglican priest. He was a prominent Tractarian in the Church of England who served mostly notably as the vicar of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, from 1859 to 1873.
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Myles Cooper
1735 - 1785 (50 years)
Myles Cooper was a figure in colonial New York. An Anglican priest, he served as the President of King's College from 1763 to 1775, and was a public opponent of the American Revolution. Early life Cooper was educated at The Queen's College, Oxford, where he later served as chaplain. Ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1761, he attracted the influence of several high clergymen, including Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, who recommended him for service in the American colonies. Cooper was thereby sent to New York in 1762 to assist Samuel Johnson, president of King's College, which was an Anglican establishment.
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W. Gordon Brown
1904 - 1979 (75 years)
William Gordon Brown was notable as the founder of Central Baptist Seminary, the leading Canadian training school for evangelical Baptist ministers from 1949 to 1993 when it merged with London Baptist Seminary to form Heritage Theological Seminary.
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George Hodges
1856 - 1919 (63 years)
George Hodges was an American Episcopal theologian, born at Rome, New York, and educated at Hamilton College . He served at Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1881 to 1894. In 1893 he helped establish the Kingsley Association in Pittsburgh, an organization dedicated to helping immigrant workers. Afterward, he became the dean of the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, Massachusetts. "The high esteem in which his religious messages are held by the reading public" resulted in a number of his books being reissued as a second edition in 1914.
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Renn Hampden
1793 - 1868 (75 years)
Renn Dickson Hampden was an English Anglican clergyman. His liberal tendencies led to conflict with traditionalist clergy in general and the supporters of Tractarianism during the years he taught in Oxford which coincided with a period of rapid social change and heightened political tensions.
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George Crolly
1813 - 1878 (65 years)
George Crolly was an Irish priest and theologian. George Crolly was born in Lough Faughan, Ballyrolly, Downpatrick, County Down, Ireland, on 11 February 1813. He entered Maynooth College in August 1829 to study for the priesthood. A fellow student at the time was his friend and fellow theologian Rev. Dr. Patrick Murray.
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Nikolaus Selnecker
1530 - 1592 (62 years)
Nikolaus Selnecker was a German musician, theologian and Protestant reformer. He is now known mainly as a hymn writer. He is also known as one of the principal authors of the Formula of Concord along with Jakob Andreä and Martin Chemnitz.
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Johan Kõpp
1874 - 1970 (96 years)
Johan Kõpp was an Estonian bishop and head of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church 1939–1944. Biography Kõpp went to high school at the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in Tartu and then studied theology at the University of Tartu. He graduated from university in 1906. After his studies he initially worked as a high school teacher in Pärnu but from 1909 to 1922 was pastor in Laiuse. Already in 1916 he had however taken up a teaching position at the University of Tartu as one of the first ethnic Estonians to do so after the Estonian Declaration of Independence. From 1920 to 1927 he was deputy rector of the university, and from 1928 to 1937 rector.
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Alain de Lille
1117 - 1202 (85 years)
Alain de Lille was a French theologian and poet. He was born in Lille, some time before 1128. His exact date of death remains unclear as well, with most research pointing toward it being between 14 April 1202, and 5 April 1203. He is known for writing a number of works on that are based upon the teachings of the liberal arts, with one of his most renowned poems, De planctu Naturae , focusing on human nature in regard to sexual conduct. Although, Alain was widely known during his lifetime, there is not a great deal known about his personal life, with the majority of our knowledge of the theol...
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Pierre de Langle
1644 - 1724 (80 years)
Pierre de Langle was a French bishop and Jansenist theologian. Life At the request of his friend Bossuet, he was made tutor to Louis Alexandre, Count of Toulouse. He was abbot of Saint-Lôfrom 24 December 1694 ; in 1698, Louis XIV of France rewarded him for his teaching duties by making him bishop of Boulogne, nominating him on 29 March 1698, with the bulls to that effect coming out on 15 September the same year.
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Helmut Rex
1913 - 1967 (54 years)
Helmut Herbert Hermann Rex was a New Zealand Presbyterian theologian and lecturer. Early life Helmut Rehbein was born in Potsdam, Germany, in 1913. He spent his youth in Berlin after moving there in 1919.
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Jacob Joseph Oettinger
1780 - 1860 (80 years)
Rabbi Jacob Joseph Oettinger , a native of Glogau, acted as the final chief rabbi of Berlin between 1825 and 1860, and served for some time as the dean of Berlin's rabbinical college. Oettinger was also known as an opponent of Leopold Zunz.
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Johannes Knolleisen
1450 - 1513 (63 years)
Johannes Knolleisen was a German theological professor. Nothing is known about his parents and his youth, aside from his being born in Allenstein , Ermland , State of the Teutonic Order. He received his magister degree in theology from the University of Leipzig, becoming rector of the university in 1478. Knolleisen became canon at Merseburg Cathedral in Merseburg in 1489. By the time of his death in 1511, Knolleisen and Lucas David had created a stipend of 700 Rhenish gulden to help two worthy students from Allenstein study in Leipzig.
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Thomas Hardesty Campbell
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Thomas Hardesty Campbell was a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, a former president and dean of Memphis Theological Seminary, and a former director of the Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Campbell retired from the seminary in 1974 and served seven years as pastor of the Harrison, Arkansas, Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1973, and was a member of White River Presbytery, in Arkansas, for many years.
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Hermann Herlitz
1834 - 1920 (86 years)
Hermann Herlitz was pastor of the Lutheran Trinity Church in East Melbourne, Australia, for 46 years from 22 March 1868 to 14 June 1914. He was president of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Victoria and of the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod. Born to Jewish parents, he converted to Christianity in 1857.
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Matthias Hiller
1646 - 1725 (79 years)
Matthias Hiller was a German Protestant theologian and Orientalist. Life Matthias Hiller was born at Stuttgart on 15 February 1646, the son of a Württemberg government secretary. He became professor of logic and metaphysics in 1692, and of Oriental languages and theology in 1698. In 1716 he exchanged these offices for the priory of Königsbronn, where he died on 11 February 1725.
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Andrzej Wiszowaty
1608 - 1678 (70 years)
Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr. was a Socinian theologian who worked with Joachim Stegmann on the Racovian Catechism of 1605, and taught at the Racovian Academy of the Polish Brethren. After the expulsion and exile from Rakow in 1639 Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr. is notable as the main mover in the printing of the Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum which was to influence Voltaire and John Locke. He supervised the printing in Amsterdam by Frans Kuyper, first of the works of Johann Crell and then, backnumbered as "Volume 1" the works of his grandfather Fausto Sozzini 1668. He was working on a revised edition of th...
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Jan Niemojewski
1531 - 1618 (87 years)
Janusz Jan Niemojewski was a Polish nobleman, and theologian of the Polish Brethren. Works 1583 – "Odpowiedź na potwarz Wilkowskiego"1583 – "Obrona przeciw niesprawiedliwemu obwinieniu".1584 – "Ukazanie iż kościół rzymski papieski nie jest apostolski..."1611 – Fausto Sozzini, "Scripta theologica seu tractatus breves de diversis materiis", Raków 1611, pp. 94–293.
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Richard Rogers
1550 - 1618 (68 years)
Richard Rogers was an English clergyman, a nonconformist under both Elizabeth I and James I. Life He was born in 1550 or 1551 to John Rogers and Agnes Carter . Family tradition in the 17th century claimed that he was the son or grandson of the steward to the earls of Warwick, but since there was no Earl of Warwick during that time, genealogists have disproved this claim. He matriculated as a sizar of Christ's College, Cambridge, in November 1565, and graduated B.A. 1571, M.A. 1574. He was appointed lecturer at Wethersfield, Essex, about 1577.
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John Hygdon
1472 - 1537 (65 years)
John Hygdon was an English academic and churchman. Career President of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1516 to 1525, Hygdon became the first dean of Cardinal College, Oxford and from 1532–3 of its successor, King Henry VIII's College . From 1502–4, he had served as vicar of Upper Beeding, Sussex. Brian Hygdon, the Dean of York, was his brother.
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John Scott Lidgett
1854 - 1953 (99 years)
John Scott Lidgett, CH was a British Wesleyan Methodist minister and educationist. He achieved prominence both as a theologian and reformer within British Methodism, stressing the importance of the church's engagement with the whole of society and human culture, and as an effective advocate for education within London. He served as the first President of the Methodist Conference in 1932–33.
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Afua Kuma
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Afua Kuma was a Ghanaian oral theologian. Biography Afua Kuma was born in Obo Kwahu in the Eastern Region of Ghana. In her childhood, she helped her parents in farming and trading and did not go to school. Although she was brought up in the Presbyterian church, where her father was an elder, in her later life she attended a local Catholic Church before joining the Church of Pentecost.
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Eugene Allen Noble
1865 - 1948 (83 years)
Eugene Allen Noble was an American academic and Methodist minister. He served as president of three institutions: Centenary University from 1902 to 1908, Goucher College from 1908 to 1911, and Dickinson College from 1911 to 1914. He was also an administrator at the Juilliard School.
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Stefano Bonsignori
1738 - 1826 (88 years)
Stefano Bonsignori or Bonsignore O.SS.C.A. was an Italian cleric, bishop and theologian. Napoleon I appointed him patriarch of Venice, but this appointment was not confirmed by the Holy See. Life Academic A son of the cotton merchant Giovanni Battista Bonsignori and his wife Giovanna Galeazzi, he began his education under an uncle who was a priest, before moving to the Archepiscopal Seminary of Milan. In 1759 he entered the oblates of Saints Ambrose and Charles and was ordained priest at the end of 1760. He served as a grammar teacher at the seminaries in Celana and Gorla, then as a rhetoric and theology teacher at the main seminary in Milan and the Helvetic College.
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Edward Burton
1794 - 1836 (42 years)
Edward Burton was an English theologian, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. Life The son of Major Edward Burton, he was born at Shrewsbury on 13 February 1794. He was educated at Westminster School, and matriculated as a commoner of Christ Church, Oxford, on 15 May 1812, gaining a studentship the next year, and in 1815, obtained a first class both in classics and mathematics. Having taken his B.A. degree on 29 October 1815, he was ordained to the curacy of Pettenhall, Staffordshire. On 28 May 1818, he proceeded M.A.
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William Richard Williams
1896 - 1962 (66 years)
William Richard Williams was the Principal of the United Theological College, Aberystwyth from 1949 to 1962, the first Secretary of the Council of Churches of Wales, and later its president. Biography Born at Pwllheli in Gwynedd to Richard and Catherine Williams, Williams moved to Aberystwyth with his mother on the death of his father in 1912 after winning a scholarship to University College, Aberystwyth, where he graduated in Greek and Philosophy. He served in the British Army during World War I, after which he studied at Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating with a first class BA degree in Theology.
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Paris de Grassis
1470 - 1528 (58 years)
Paris de Grassis was the master of ceremonies to Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X. He joined the Office of Ceremonies in May 1504 as a participating ceremonialist, progressed to role of president of the Office when he became bishop of Pesaro in 1513, and continued as president until he died in 1528. De Grassis' diary covers his work at the papal court from 1504 to 1521.
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John Sinnich
1613 - 1668 (55 years)
John Sinnich OFM, was an Irish-born priest who was professor of theology at the University of Louvain. He wrote the index to the Augustinus, Cornelius Jansen's posthumously published work, and following the controversy, he tried to argue that Jansenism conformed with the church's teachings and cleared from censure. As a result, he was accused of being a Jansenist.
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