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 Theology,
#2601
Luke Joseph Hooke
1716 - 1796 (80 years)
Luke Joseph Hooke was a controversial Irish theologian, representing in Paris the "Catholicism of the Enlightenment". The laws of civil society should be so designed, he argued, to enable individuals to conform, through their own free will, to the natural rights ordained by God.
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Wilhelm Pauck
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
Wilhelm Pauck was a German-American church historian and historical theologian in the field of Reformation studies whose fifty-year teaching career reached from the University of Chicago and Union Theological Seminary, to Vanderbilt and Stanford universities. His impact was extended through frequent lectures and visiting appointments in the U.S. and Europe. Pauck served as a bridge between the historical-critical study of Protestant theology at the University of Berlin and U.S. universities, seminaries, and divinity schools. Combining high critical acumen with a keen sense of the drama of human history, in his prime Pauck was considered the Dean of historical theology in the United States.
Go to Profile#2603
Hans Konrad von Orelli
1846 - 1912 (66 years)
Hans Konrad von Orelli was a Swiss theologian. He was born in Zurich and educated at Lausanne, Zurich and Erlangen. He also visited Tübingen for theology and Leipzig for oriental languages. In 1869 he was appointed preacher at the orphan house, Zurich, and in 1871 Privatdozent at the university. In 1873 he went to Basel as professor extraordinarius of theology, becoming ordinary professor in 1881. His chief work is on the Old Testament. He wrote a journal of Palestinian travel, Durchs Heilige Land ; Die alttestamentliche Weissagung wn der Vollendung des Goltesreiches , commentaries on Isaiah,...
Go to Profile#2604
John McClintock
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
John McClintock was an American Methodist Episcopal theologian and educationalist, born in Philadelphia. Biography McClintock matriculated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Ill health, however, forced him to leave Wesleyan in his freshman year. Unable to return, he graduated subsequently from the University of Pennsylvania in 1835, and was assistant professor of mathematics , professor of mathematics , and professor of Latin and Greek in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He opposed the Mexican–American War, as well as slavery, but did not consider himself an abolitionist.
Go to Profile#2605
Andreas Essenius
1618 - 1677 (59 years)
Andreas Essenius was a Dutch Reformed theologian, controversialist and academic. He became professor of theology at the University of Utrecht. Life He was born Andreas van Essen in Zaltbommel where he studied Latin and Greek. He went on to the Latin school in Utrecht and then to the University of Utrecht where he was a student of Bernardus Schotanus and Gisbertus Voetius. In 1640 he received his doctorate, and was appointed as a minister in the little town of Neerlangbroek.
Go to Profile#2606
Richard Fishacre
1200 - 1248 (48 years)
Richard Fishacre was an English Dominican theologian, the first to hold the Dominican chair at the University of Oxford. He taught at Oxford and authored the first commentary on the Four Books of Sentences of Peter Lombard to be issued from the Oxford schools. Fishacre wrote his commentary between 1241 and 1245.
Go to Profile#2607
Fulgentius Ferrandus
450 - 546 (96 years)
Fulgentius Ferrandus or Ferrand of Carthage was a Christian theologian of the Roman province of Africa, modern day Tunisia. Biography Little is known of his early life. At the end of his life, he was a deacon of the Church of Carthage, and a renowned theologian, consulted in 546 by the Roman deacons Pelagius and Anatolius on the affair of the Three Chapters which had just broken out. Ferrand's reply was retained, but Facundus of Hermiane, writing in the winter of 546/47 recounts this consultation by referring to Ferrand as " [...] laudabilis in Christo memoriæ Ferrando Carthaginiensi diacono scripserunt".
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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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Ivan Snegarov
1883 - 1971 (88 years)
Ivan Yonchev Snegarov was a Bulgarian historian and archivist. Biography Snegrov was born on October 12, 1883, in the city of Ohrid, then in the Ottoman Empire, today in North Macedonia. He studied in Ohrid, and later at the Constantinople Theological Seminary . Then he was a clerk in the Bulgarian Exarchate in Constantinople . In 1908-1912 he studied at the Kiev Theological Academy. In 1913-1926 he was a Bulgarian teacher at the Constantinople Seminary and in the Sofia Seminary. Snegarov became a full-time associate professor at the Faculty of Theology at the Sofia University , full professor , corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences , academician .
Go to Profile#2610
Julius Rupp
1809 - 1884 (75 years)
Julius Friedrich Leopold Rupp was a Prussian Protestant theologian. He founded the first Free Protestant Congregation in Königsberg, which rejected all state or church control and believed in absolute freedom of conscience for its members.
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Karl Fezer
1891 - 1960 (69 years)
Karl Fezer , was a German Lutheran theologian. Biography After his training Fezer was initially a curate in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, then head pastor in Stuttgart and Tübingen. From 1926 to 1959 he was the Professor for Practical Theology at the University of Tübingen. He was Chair of the Protestant Seminary there from 1931 to 1959 while simultaneously Rector of the University from 1933 to 1959. For a short time he was the head of the German Christians movement which sought to institute Nazi racial policies in the German Protestant Church. He petitioned for membership in the Nazi Party in May 1933.
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Thomas Bayes
1702 - 1761 (59 years)
Thomas Bayes was an English statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister who is known for formulating a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem. Bayes never published what would become his most famous accomplishment; his notes were edited and published posthumously by Richard Price.
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Dominic Gravina
1573 - 1643 (70 years)
Dominic Gravina was an Italian Dominican theologian. Life He entered the Dominican Order at Naples, and made his classical and sacred studies in the order's schools. As professor of theology in the Dominican college of St. Dominic , in the Minerva, and in other schools of his order, he became the most celebrated theologian of his time in Italy.
Go to Profile#2614
János Apáczai Csere
1625 - 1659 (34 years)
János Apáczai Csere was a Transylvanian Hungarian polyglot, pedagogist, philosopher and theologian, famous for his work The Hungarian Encyclopedia, the first textbook to be written in Hungarian. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls him "the leading Protestant scholar and writer" of 17th-century Hungary.
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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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Hugh of Saint Victor
1096 - 1141 (45 years)
Hugh of Saint Victor was a Saxon canon regular and a leading theologian and writer on mystical theology. Life As with many medieval figures, little is known about Hugh's early life. He was probably born in the 1090s. His homeland may have been Lorraine, Ypres in Flanders, or the Duchy of Saxony. Some sources say that his birth occurred in the Harz district, being the eldest son of Baron Conrad of Blankenburg. Over the protests of his family, he entered the Priory of St. Pancras, a community of canons regular, where he had studied, located at Hamerleve or Hamersleben, near Halberstadt.
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Timothy Dwight V
1828 - 1916 (88 years)
Timothy Dwight V was an American academic, educator, Congregational minister, and President of Yale University . During his years as the school's president, Yale's schools first organized as a university. His grandfather was Timothy Dwight IV, who served as President of Yale College ninety years before his grandson's tenure.
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Nicolaus von Amsdorf
1483 - 1565 (82 years)
Nicolaus von Amsdorf was a German Lutheran theologian and an early Protestant reformer. As bishop of Naumburg , he became the first Lutheran bishop in the Holy Roman Empire. Biography He was born in Torgau, on the Elbe.
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Honoré Tournély
1658 - 1729 (71 years)
Honoré Tournély was a French Catholic theologian. He was a Gallican opponent of Jansenism. Life He was born in Antibes, Provence, to poor and obscure parents. An uncle, a priest at Paris, invited him there and gave him a good education. On completing his philosophical and theological studies, he became a doctor of the Sorbonne in 1686, and two years later was sent by the king to the University of Douai to teach theology. Here, he distinguished himself by his lectures and by his opposition of the Jansenists. He was even accused of forgeries in order to compromise them, but the proofs of this ...
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Carl Siegfried
1830 - 1903 (73 years)
Carl Gustav Adolf Siegfried was a German theologian who specialized in Old Testament studies. He studied theology and philology at the universities of Halle and Bonn. In 1859 he received his doctorate from Halle, and afterwards worked as a teacher at the cathedral gymnasium in Magdeburg and at the regional school in Pforta. In 1875, he was appointed professor of Old Testament theology at the University of Jena.
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Pope Innocent II
1100 - 1143 (43 years)
Pope Innocent II , born Gregorio Papareschi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 14 February 1130 to his death in 1143. His election as pope was controversial and the first eight years of his reign were marked by a struggle for recognition against the supporters of Anacletus II. He reached an understanding with King Lothair III of Germany who supported him against Anacletus and whom he crowned as Holy Roman emperor. Innocent went on to preside over the Second Lateran council.
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Peter John Olivi
1248 - 1298 (50 years)
Peter John Olivi, also Pierre de Jean Olivi or Petrus Joannis Olivi , was a French Franciscan theologian and philosopher who, although he died professing the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, remained a controversial figure in the arguments surrounding poverty at the beginning of the 14th century. In large part, this was due to his view that the Franciscan vow of poverty also entailed usus pauper . While contemporary Franciscans generally agreed that usus pauper was important to the Franciscan way of life, they disagreed that it was part of their vow of poverty. His support of the rigorous...
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Bernard Loomer
1912 - 1985 (73 years)
Bernard MacDougall Loomer was an American professor and theologian. Loomer was longtime Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School and a leading proponent of Process Theology. Biography Loomer is principally known as contributor to the study of process theology. Loomer wrote “The world is God because it is the source and preserver of meaning; because the creative advance of the world in its adventure is the supreme cause to be served; because even in our desecration of our space and time within it, the world is holy ground; and because it contains and yet enshrouds the ultimate mystery inherent within existence itself.
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Michael of Cesena
1270 - 1342 (72 years)
Michael of Cesena was an Italian Franciscan, Minister General of that order, and theologian. His advocacy of evangelical poverty brought him into conflict with Pope John XXII. Biography Of his early life little is known. He was born at Cesena. Having entered the Franciscan Order, he studied at Paris and took the doctor's degree in theology in 1316. He taught theology at Bologna and wrote several commentaries on Holy Scripture and the Sentences of Peter Lombard.
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Gaetano Sanseverino
1811 - 1865 (54 years)
Gaetano Sanseverino was an Italian philosopher and theologian. He made a comparative study including the scholastics, particularly Thomas Aquinas, and of the connection between their doctrine and that of the church fathers.
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Georg Christian Benedict Ackermann
1763 - 1833 (70 years)
Georg Christian Benedict Ackermann was a German theologian and teacher. He was born in Vier upon the river Elbe. He visited school in Schwerin in Mecklenburg, then in 1782 the University of Göttingen in Hanover to study theology.
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André Rivet
1573 - 1651 (78 years)
André Rivet was a French Huguenot theologian. Life Rivet was born at Saint-Maixent, 43 km southwest of Poitiers, France. After completing his education at Bern, he studied theology privately at Bern and La Rochelle, and from 1595 to 1620 was at Thouars, first as chaplain of the duke of La Trémouille and later as pastor. In 1617 he was elected president of the Synod at Vitré; and in 1620 he was called to Leiden as professor of theology.
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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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Nikephoros Theotokis
1731 - 1800 (69 years)
Nikephoros Theotokis or Nikiforos Theotokis was a Greek scholar and theologian, who became an archbishop in the southern provinces of the Russian Empire. A polymath, he is respected by the Greek Orthodox church as one of the "teachers of the nation".
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Jean-Baptiste Cotelier
1626 - 1686 (60 years)
Jean-Baptiste Cotelier or Cotelerius was a Patristic scholar and Catholic theologian. Life His early education was under the personal direction of his father, at one time a Protestant minister, but later a convert to Catholicism. He was reportedly able to interpret the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek before the General Assembly of the French clergy in Mantes ; he made such a favourable impression on the clergy that they increased his father's pension. During the period of his theological studies at Paris , Cotelier's intellectual qualities procured for him an introduction to the king .
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Jaan Kiivit Sr.
1906 - 1971 (65 years)
Jaan Kiivit Senior was an Estonian prelate who was the Archbishop of Tallinn and the first primate of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church from 1949 and 1967, after the break away from the exiled Estonian Evangelium's Lutheran Church.
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Robert Knight Rudolph
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Robert Knight Rudolph was an American Reformed Episcopal minister and theologian. He served as Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church in Philadelphia for forty-nine years before his retirement in 1981. Together Rudolph and his father trained men for the gospel ministry at this institution for a total of seventy-four years. Rudolph was known for his strict adherence to Calvinism and presuppositional apologetics.
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Friedrich Spanheim the Younger
1632 - 1701 (69 years)
Friedrich Spanheim the Younger was a German Calvinist theologian of conservative views, son of Friedrich Spanheim. Life He was born in Geneva, and studied at the University of Leiden, graduating M.A. in 1648. He joined the faculty of the University of Heidelberg in 1655.
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Eelco Alta
1723 - 1798 (75 years)
Eelco Alta was a Frisian clergyman, theologian, and veterinarian. Education Eelco Alta was born in 1723 in the coastal village of Makkum, and studied theology at the University of Franeker from 1737 until 1745, when he started as a minister in the nearby villages of Beers and Jellum. After nine years he moved to the main protestant church of Boazum, where he was to spend almost all of the next fifty years. He was politically active in the last years of the Dutch Republic, siding with the forces of republican "Patriotism", partly for religious reasons. During the royalist backlash of the late...
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Mark Hopkins
1802 - 1887 (85 years)
Mark Hopkins was an American educator and Congregationalist theologian, president of Williams College from 1836 to 1872. An epigram — widely attributed to President James A. Garfield, a student of Hopkins — defined an ideal college as "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other."
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Bernard Joseph Topel
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Bernard Joseph Topel was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diopcese of Spokane in Washington State from 1955 to 1978. Biography Early life Topel was born on March 31, 1903, in Bozeman, Montana, the fourth son of Henry Albert and Mary Pauline Topel. Henry Topel was a tailor who had immigrated from Germany in 1878. Mary Topel immigrated from Switzerland at age nine. Bernard Topel attended grade school in Bozeman and, after graduating from St. Charles High School in Helena, studied at Mount St. Charles College in Helena, Montana. He then studied theology at the Grand Seminary of Montreal in Montreal, Quebec.
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Alexander Henderson
1583 - 1646 (63 years)
Alexander Henderson was a Scottish theologian, and an important ecclesiastical statesman of his period. He is considered the second founder of the Reformed Church in Scotland. He was one of the most eminent ministers of the Church of Scotland in the most important period of her history, namely, previous to the middle of the seventeenth century.
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Karl Gottfried Wilhelm Theile
1799 - 1854 (55 years)
Karl Gottfried Wilhelm Theile was a German theologian. From 1817 to 1823 he studied at the University of Leipzig, where he subsequently received his PhD and degree in theology . From 1826 to 1845 he was an associate professor of Evangelical theology at Leipzig, followed by a full professorship in the same discipline from 1845 up until his death in 1854. In 1851/52 he was dean to the theological faculty at Leipzig.
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Robert Moberly
1845 - 1903 (58 years)
Robert Campbell Moberly was an English theologian and the first principal of St Stephen's House, Oxford . Life He was the son of George Moberly, Bishop of Salisbury, and faithfully maintained the traditions of his father's teaching. His sister was the writer Charlotte Anne Moberly. Educated at Twyford School, Winchester and New College, Oxford, he was appointed senior student of Christ Church in 1867 and tutor in 1869. In 1876 he went out with Bishop Copleston to Ceylon for six months.
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Simon Goulart
1543 - 1628 (85 years)
Simon Goulart was a French Reformed theologian, humanist and poet. Life He was born at Senlis in northern France. He first studied law, then adopted the Reformed faith and became one of the pastors at Geneva in the Republic of Geneva . He was called to Antwerp, to Orange, to Montpellier and to Nîmes as minister, and to Lausanne as professor; but remained at Geneva and became a citizen.
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Thomas Kerchever Arnold
1800 - 1853 (53 years)
Thomas Kerchever Arnold was an English theologian and voluminous writer of educational works. Life Arnold was born in 1800. His father, Thomas Graham Arnold, was a doctor of Stamford. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, was seventh junior optime in the mathematical tripos of 1821, and was elected fellow of his college shortly afterwards. He took his degree of B.A. in the same year, and that of M.A. in 1824. In 1830 he was presented to the living of Lyndon, in Rutland, where his parishioners only numbered one hundred. He at first devoted his ample leisure to theology, and showed himself an obstinate opponent of the views advanced by the leaders of the Oxford movement.
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Paul Wernle
1872 - 1939 (67 years)
Paul Wernle was a Swiss theologian, born in Hottingen, today part of the city of Zürich. He studied at the Universities of Basel, Berlin and Göttingen. At Basel he was a student of Bernhard Duhm , and in Göttingen was influenced by Wilhelm Bousset . In 1900 he became an associate professor at Basel, where in 1905 he was appointed a full professor of New Testament Studies. During the course of his career he also taught classes in dogmatics and church history.
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George Bush
1796 - 1859 (63 years)
George Bush was an American biblical scholar, pastor, abolitionist, and academic. A member of the Bush family, he is a distant relative of both President George H. W. Bush and President George W. Bush.
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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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Julian Joseph Overbeck
1821 - 1905 (84 years)
Julian Joseph Overbeck was a Roman Catholic priest who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and became a pioneer of Western Rite Orthodoxy. The modern re-emergence of an Orthodox Western Rite begins in 1864 with the work of Overbeck, a former Catholic priest. Overbeck had left the priesthood, converted to Lutheranism and married, though it is uncertain whether he ever functioned as a Lutheran pastor. He immigrated to England in 1863 to become professor of German at the Royal Military Academy, where he also undertook studies of the Church of England and Orthodoxy. Convinced that both the papacy and ...
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Israel Gottlieb Canz
1690 - 1753 (63 years)
Israel Gottlieb Canz was a Protestant theologian and philosopher of Germany. Life Israel Gottlieb Canz was born on 26 February 1690, at Grünthal. He studied at Tübingen, and took, in 1709, the degree of doctor of philosophy. In 1720 he was deacon at Nürtingen, and was, in 1734, appointed professor of elocution at Tübingen. In 1739 he was made professor of logic and metaphysics, and in 1747 professor of theology. He died there, on 2 February 1753, at the age of 62.
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Olive Winchester
1879 - 1947 (68 years)
Olive May Winchester was an American ordained minister and a pioneer biblical scholar and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene, who was in 1912 the first woman ordained by any trinitarian Christian denomination in the United Kingdom, the first woman admitted into and graduated from the Bachelor of Divinity course at the University of Glasgow, and the first woman to complete a Doctor of Theology degree from the divinity school of Drew University.
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Jacob van Hoogstraaten
1460 - 1527 (67 years)
Jacob van Hoogstraten was a Flemish Dominican theologian and controversialist. Education, professor Van Hoogstraten was born in Hoogstraten, Burgundian Netherlands . He studied the classics and theology with the Dominicans at Old University of Leuven. In 1485 was among the first in the history of that institution to receive the degree of Master of Arts. He there entered the order, and after his ordination to the priesthood in 1496, he matriculated in the University of Cologne to continue his theological studies. At the general chapter held in 1498 at Ferrara he was appointed professor of theology at the Dominican college of Cologne.
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Paul Drews
1858 - 1912 (54 years)
Paul Gottfried Drews was a German Lutheran theologian. He studied theology at the Thomasschule zu Leipzig and at the University of Göttingen, then served as a pastor in Burkau and Dresden . In 1894 he became an associate professor of practical theology at the University of Jena, followed by full professorships at Giessen and Halle .
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Ericus Olai
1401 - 1486 (85 years)
Ericus Olai was a Swedish theologian and historian. He served as a professor of theology at Uppsala University and dean at Uppsala Cathedral. Ericus Olai was the author of the chronicle Chronica regni Gothorum and was an early proponent of Gothicismus.
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