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,
#2401
Henry of Harclay
1270 - 1317 (47 years)
Henry Harclay was an English medieval philosopher and university chancellor. Biography Harclay was born in the Diocese of Carlisle near the English and Scottish borders. Harclay's family descended from "an old but minor knightly family" of modest origins that gave them their surname Harclay from Hartley; the family name had "considerable variation in the spelling… including: Herkeley, Harkeley, Archilay, Harcla, [etc.]" . Harclay had one sister and six brothers; one of which also brings celebrity to the family name. Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle was a controversial figure in his time ...
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Phillip Norreys
1301 - 1401 (100 years)
Phillip Norreys, Irish theologian, fl. 1427-1465. A native of the diocese of Dublin, Ireland, Norreys made a successful career for himself in the church and Oxford University. He was vicar of Dundalk from 1427, and Doctor of Theology at Oxford by 1435. He was later successively canon, prebendary and Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, occupying the latter post by 1457. He also held the post of rector of Trim.
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Franz Oberthür
1745 - 1831 (86 years)
Franz Oberthür was a German Roman Catholic scholar who edited an 18th-century edition of Josephus once owned by Thomas Jefferson. In 1773 he was appointed professor of dogmatics and polemics at the University of Würzburg. He is best known for his efforts involving reform within the church and the education system. In 1806 he founded the Gesellschaft zur Vervollkommung der mechanischen Künste .
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Melchior Hittorp
1525 - 1584 (59 years)
Melchior Hittorp was a German Roman Catholic theologian and liturgical writer. His interests included the liturgical forms of early Christianity. Life On the completion of his studies he obtained the degree of Licentiate of Theology, and was appointed Canon at S. Maria ad Gradus. In 1593 he was elected dean of the collegiate church of St. Cunibert.
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Henri-Michel Guedier de Saint-Aubin
1695 - 1741 (46 years)
Henri-Michel Guedier de Saint-Aubin was a French theologian. He was born in Gournay-en-Bray on 17 June 1695. He studied at Paris, and received the doctor's degree from the Sorbonne Oct. 29,1723. He became professor in that institution in 1730, and its librarian in 1736. Some time after he obtained the abbey of St. Vulmer. He was acquainted with Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, English, and Italian, besides history, theology, and kindred sciences. For fourteen years he decided all cases of conscience presented to the Sorbonne. He died in Paris on 27 September 1742.
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Alexander Carson
1776 - 1844 (68 years)
Alexander Carson was an Irish Baptist minister. He was known as an author, pastor-teacher and theologian. Life Carson studied in Glasgow and was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in Tobermore, County Londonderry in 1798. After several years he left the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and published Reasons for Separating from the General Synod of Ulster as justification of his action, where he stated:
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Samuel Eaton
1596 - 1665 (69 years)
Samuel Eaton was an English independent divine. Life Eaton was the third son of Richard Eaton, vicar of Great Budworth, Cheshire, and was born in the hamlet of Crowley in Great Budworth. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1624 and M.A. 1628.
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Sixtus of Siena
1520 - 1569 (49 years)
Sixtus of Siena was a Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism, and became a Roman Catholic theologian. Biography He began his career as a Franciscan preacher, speaking throughout Italy. Though he was convicted to die in Rome for the crime of heresy or recidivism, he was saved by a Dominican inquisitor, the future Pope Pius V, who repealed the condemnation when Sixtus recanted and pledged to transfer to the Dominican Order instead. He is considered one of the two most outstanding Dominican scholars of his generation. He had as a master Lancelotto Politi, some of whose writings he later publicly criticised.
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Daniel Gerdes
1698 - 1765 (67 years)
Daniel Gerdes was a German Calvinist theologian and historian. He became professor at the University of Duisburg in 1726, and at the University of Groningen in 1736. While broadly supporting Protestant freedom of conscience, Gerdes drew a line in his attacks on the Mennonite minister Johannes Stinstra. In that case Gerdes used the views of Samuel Werenfels, tolerant and well thought of by Benjamin Hoadley, to condemn Stinstra.
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Juan Bautista
1555 - 1700 (145 years)
Juan Bautista was a Mexican Franciscan theologian and writer. Life He joined the Franciscans in his native city, and taught theology and metaphysics at the convent of St. Francis of Mexico. He was also a definitor of the province, and became Guardian of Tezcuco twice , of Tlatelolco , and of Tacuba in 1605.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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 .
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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.
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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. ...
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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 .
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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.
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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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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 .
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ralph Niger
1140 - Present (886 years)
Ralph Niger, Latin Radulphus Niger or Radulfus Niger, anglicized Ralph the Black , was an Anglo-French theologian and one of the English chroniclers. He was from Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, and became Archdeacon of Gloucester.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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”.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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