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List of the most influential people in Theology,

#2801

Jacques Leclercq

1891 - 1971 (80 years)

Jacques Leclercq was a Belgian Roman Catholic theologian and priest. Life He received a degree in law from the Université libre de Bruxelles and one in philosophy from the University of Louvain , and was ordained a priest in 1917. He was a theologian and a professor at Saint-Louis University, Brussels, Belgium and the UCLouvain. In 1926 he founded the revue La Cité chrétienne.

#2802

David Dickson

1583 - 1662 (79 years)

David Dickson was a Church of Scotland minister and theologian. Life David Dickson of Busby was born in Glasgow in 1583. He was the son of John Dickson, a wealthy local merchant with premises on the Trongate. He was at first intended for the mercantile profession, but instead studied for the Church. After studying at Glasgow University he gained an M.A. around 1601. He was then appointed Regent of Philosophy in the University. On 31 March 1618. he was ordained as minister of Irvine. He declared against the Perth Articles, and was summoned before the Court of High Commission. Declining its authority, he was deprived of office.

#2803

Alexander Black

1789 - 1864 (75 years)

Alexander Black DD professor of Exegetical Theology in New College, Edinburgh. Black was a native of Aberdeen, where he received his education, first at the Grammar School, and afterwards at Marischal College. After passing through the Divinity Hall, he was appointed assistant to Dr Ross, East Church, Aberdeen, and he was subsequently presented to the Parish Church of Tarves, as successor to Duncan Mearns. Upon the death of David Brown, Black in 1831 became his successor in the Professorship of Divinity in Marischal College. His knowledge of Hebrew and the cognate tongues procured him, in 1839, a place in a deputation sent by the General Assembly to Palestine.

#2804

Edmund Bunny

1540 - 1619 (79 years)

Edmund Bunny was an Anglican churchman of Calvinist views. Life He was born in 1540 at the Vache, the seat of Edward Restwold, his mother's father, near Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire. He was the eldest son of Richard Bunny of Newton or Bunny Hall in Wakefield parish, who was treasurer of Berwick, and otherwise employed in public services in the north, under Henry VIII and Edward VI; he suffered as a Protestant under Mary, and obtained some compensation from Elizabeth .

#2805

Odo of Châteauroux

Odo of Châteauroux

1190 - 1273 (83 years)

Odo or Eudes of Châteauroux , also known as and by many other names, was a French theologian and scholastic philosopher, papal legate and cardinal. He was “an experienced preacher and promoter of crusades”. Over 1000 of his sermons survive.

#2806

Mark Frank

1613 - 1664 (51 years)

Mark Frank or Franck was an English churchman and academic, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Life He was baptised at Little Brickhill, Buckinghamshire, and was admitted pensioner of Pembroke College, Cambridge, 4 July 1627. He was elected to a scholarship in 1630, and to a fellowship 8 October 1634, having become M.A. the same year. In 1641 he became B.D., and was chosen junior treasurer of his college, and senior treasurer in 1642.

#2807

Hermann Hamelmann

Hermann Hamelmann

1526 - 1595 (69 years)

Hermann Hamelmann was a German Lutheran theologian and the reformer of Westphalia. Born in Osnabrück, he became the priest at Kamen in 1552. While a priest, he converted to the Evangelical Lutheran faith and announced it publicly on Trinity Sunday, 1553, and as a result he was forced to leave the town. During a stay at Wittenberg, he discussed the Lord's Supper with Philipp Melanchthon. In August 1553, he became the pastor at Bielefeld, and in 1556 he became the pastor at St. Mary's Church in Lemgo. He became General Superintendent at Bad Gandersheim in 1560, where he introduced the Reformation into Braunschweig.

#2808

Edmund Chishull

1670 - 1733 (63 years)

Edmund Chishull was an English clergyman and antiquary. Life He was son of Paul Chishull, and was born at Eyworth, Bedfordshire, 22 March 1670–1. He was a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1687, where he graduated B.A. in 1690, M.A. in 1693, and became a Fellow in 1696.

#2809

Beda Dudík

1815 - 1890 (75 years)

Beda František Dudík was a historian and Benedictine monk in the Rajhrad Monastery. Life After studying at the philosophical school at Brno he attended the University of Olomouc. In 1836 he entered the Benedictine Order and in 1840 was ordained priest at Rajhrad. Then until 1854 he taught first the classical languages and then history at the gymnasium of Brünn.

#2810

Christopher Elderfield

1607 - 1652 (45 years)

Christopher Elderfield was an English clergyman and theologian. Life The son of William Elderfield, he was born at Harwell, Berkshire, where he was baptised 11 April 1607. He studied at a local school kept by Hugh Lloyd, M.A., the vicar, and in 1621 he entered St. Mary Hall, Oxford, as a batler. In due course he took the two degrees in arts and entered into holy orders.

#2811

Lilian Scholes

1902 - 1972 (70 years)

Lilian Lelean Scholes was a Methodist preacher, theologian and author in Melbourne, Australia who in 1934 was the first woman to graduate with the degree of Bachelor of Divinity from the Melbourne College of Divinity.

#2812

John Bird

1558 - 1558 (0 years)

John Bird was an English Carmelite friar and subsequently a bishop. He was Warden of the Carmelite house in Coventry, and twice Provincial of his order. He attracted the attention of Henry VIII by his preaching in favour of the royal supremacy over the English Church.

#2813

Eliphalet Nott

1773 - 1866 (93 years)

Eliphalet Nott , was a famed Presbyterian minister, inventor, educational pioneer, and long-term president of Union College, Schenectady, New York. Early life Nott was born at Ashford, Connecticut, on June 25, 1773. He was the second son, and youngest of nine children, born to Stephen Nott and Deborah Nott.

#2814

William Peryn

William Peryn was an English Roman Catholic priest and Dominican friar who in the reign of Mary I became prior of the short-lived Priory of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, London. Life Peryn was educated at Blackfriars in Oxford and there are records of him being there in 1529 and 1531, the year in which he was ordained. He went to London and was a preacher strongly against heresy, and a chaplain to Sir John Port. Soon after Henry VIII’s Royal Act of Supremacy, 1534, he went into exile, but in 1543returned to England, when he applied for the degree of Bachelor of Theology at Oxford. He became ...

#2815

John Morris

1826 - 1893 (67 years)

John Morris, SJ , was an English Jesuit priest and scholar of Church history. Life Early life Morris was born in Ootacamund, Tamil Nadu, then under the British Raj. He was a son of John Carnac Morris, FRS, an official of the East India Company who was also a noted scholar of Telugu, and of his wife, Rosanna Curtis. He was educated partly in India, partly at Harrow School, partly in reading for Cambridge with Dean Alford, the New Testament scholar. Under him a great change passed over Morris's ideas. Giving up the thought of taking the law as his profession, he became enthusiastic for ecclesia...

#2816

Johannes Rhenanus

1528 - 1589 (61 years)

Johannes Rhenanus was a German salinist, theologian, alchemist, printer and author. Life From 1548, Johannes Rhenanus studied theology in Marburg, in 1553 he was ordained by Adam Krafft, the reformer of Hessen. Between 1553 and 1554 he worked as a second pastor in his hometown. At Pentecost in 1555 Landgrave Philipp transferred him to Allendorf in Sooden. Meanwhile, he called himself no longer Rheinlandt but Latinized his name to Johannes Rhenanus. In 1566, he married Catharina Brown , daughter of the rent writer Jost Braun von Melsungen. They had five children. His second marriage was wit...

#2817

Matthew Turner

Matthew Turner , a Liverpool physician, is considered to be the author or co-author of the 1782 pamphlet, Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, the first published work of avowed atheism in Britain. Turner was also a pioneer in the use of ether for medical purposes, and wrote a pamphlet on the subject. In a footnote, Turner was the man who introduced Josiah Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley in Liverpool, a friendship which led to the formation of the company that produced the famous pottery.

#2818

John of Schoonhoven

1356 - 1432 (76 years)

John of Schoonhoven was a Flemish theologian and writer. After a philosophical education at the University of Paris he entered the convent of the regular canons at Groenendaal near Brussels , where he met John of Ruysbroeck. In 1386 he became prior and master to the novices. After the accession Groenendaal to the Windesheimer congregation he wrote many sermons, some of which became the most well-known writings at the general chapter. Beside these and other sermons, spiritual writings and letters, he wrote the then celebrated Epistola responsalis super epistolam cancellarii.

#2819

David Stow Adam

1859 - 1925 (66 years)

David Stow Adam was a Scottish minister and professor. David was born near Langside in Glasgow to George Adam and Jane , both schoolteachers. He matriculated to the University of Glasgow in 1874, receiving a Master of Arts degree in 1881 and a Bachelor of Divinity in 1884. He also studied at Erlangen University. Between 1881 and 1884, he taught logic and metaphysics at the University of Glasgow, later teaching Hebrew at Free Church Training College between 1885 and 1886.

#2820

Jesper Brochmand

Jesper Brochmand

1585 - 1652 (67 years)

Jesper Rasmussen Brochmand was a Danish Lutheran clergyman, theologian and professor who served as Bishop of the Diocese of Zealand from 1638 until his death. Brochmand was a key founder of the dogmatic system that formed the basis for the lutheran orthodoxy in Denmark.

#2821

David Low Dodge

1774 - 1852 (78 years)

David Low Dodge was an American activist and theologian who helped to establish the New York Peace Society and was a founder of the New York Bible Society and the New York Tract Society. According to historian Dale R. Steiner, he wrote "some of the earliest and most effective antiwar literature in the United States."

#2822

Rudolf Seydel

1835 - 1892 (57 years)

Rudolf Seydel was a German philosopher and theologian born in Dresden. In 1860 he received his habilitation at the University of Leipzig, where in 1867 he became an associate professor of philosophy. He was a disciple of Christian Hermann Weisse , and is remembered for his studies involving parallels between Buddhism and Christianity. Seydel died in Leipzig on December 8, 1892.

#2823

David Tappan

1752 - 1803 (51 years)

David Tappan was an American theologian. He occupied the Hollis Chair at Harvard Divinity School until his death in 1803. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1796. He graduated from Harvard University in 1771.

#2824

Roswell Parkhurst Barnes

1902 - 1969 (67 years)

Reverend Roswell Parkhurst Barnes was an American theologian and Christian religious leader, advocate and author in the 20th century. He was married to Helen Bosworth. Life Barnes was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on July 10, 1901, into a Calvinist family with generations of Presbyterian ministers. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English at Lafayette College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a bachelor's divinity degree at the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. He was later awarded honorary doctorates by Lafayette and Cedar Crest College. After attending New York University and Columbia University, Barnes spent several years as an educator.

#2825

Hermann Thyraeus

1532 - 1591 (59 years)

Hermann Thyräus was a German Jesuit theologian and preacher. Life He studied first at Cologne, and then, after 1522, at the Collegium Germanicum at Rome. On 26 May 1556, he was received into the Society of Jesus by Ignatius Loyola.

#2826

Giovanni Bellarini

1552 - 1630 (78 years)

Giovanni Bellarini was an Italian Roman Catholic theologian who wrote influential commentaries on the Council of Trent. He was a Barnabite. Life He was born at Castelnuovo, Italy, in 1552, and was Visitor and twice Assistant General of his order. He taught theology at Padua and Rome, and was esteemed particularly by Pope Gregory XV. He died at Milan, 27 August 1630.

#2827

John Moore

1646 - 1714 (68 years)

John Moore was Bishop of Norwich and Bishop of Ely and was a famous bibliophile whose vast collection of books forms the surviving "Royal Library" within Cambridge University Library. Origins Bishop John Moore was descended from the ancient family of De La Moor , of Moore Hayes in the parish of Cullompton in Devonshire, England. He was born in Market Harborough in Leicestershire, the son of Thomas Moore , an ironmonger of Market Harborough, by his wife Elizabeth Wright, daughter of Edward Wright of Sutton in the parish of Broughton, Leicestershire. The Bishop's paternal grandfather was Rev....

#2828

Kaspar Eberhard

Kaspar Eberhard

1523 - 1575 (52 years)

Kaspar Eberhard was a German Lutheran theologian and teacher. He was born at Schneeberg, and died at Wittenberg. Life Bibliography Walter Friedensburg: Geschichte der Universität Wittenberg. Max Niemeyer, Halle 1917,Irene Dingel, Günther Wartenberg: Die Theologische Fakultät Wittenberg 1502 bis 1602, Leipzig 2002, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 29, Leipzig 1932, S. 97-132Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 30, Leipzig 1933, S. 43Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 31, Leipzig 1934, S. 57Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Jahrgang 34, Leipzig 1937, S. 167-169Christian Gottlieb Jöcher: Allgemeines Gelehrten–Lexikon.

#2829

Konrad Hubert

1507 - 1577 (70 years)

Konrad Hubert, also Konrad Huber, Konrad Huober, or Konrad Humbert , was a German Reformed theologian, hymn writer and reformer. He was for 18 years the assistant of Martin Bucer at St. Thomas, Strasbourg.

#2830

Hieronim Malecki

1527 - 1583 (56 years)

Hieronim Malecki Hieronim Malecki was the son of Johannes Maletius , who was a printer of Polish language Lutheran religious literature in Königsberg in Ducal Prussia, then a fief of Kingdom of Poland. Hieronim studied in Kraków at the Jagiellonian University and then at the University of Königsberg.

#2831

James Wilson

1836 - 1931 (95 years)

James Maurice Wilson was a British priest in the Church of England as well as a theologian, teacher and astronomer. Early life Wilson and his twin brother, Edward Pears Wilson, attended King William's College on the Isle of Man from August 1848 to midsummer 1853 . Their father Edward, vicar of Nocton in Lincolnshire, had earlier been headmaster there. According to his autobiography, Wilson had a rather unhappy time at King William's College. He later studied at Sedbergh School.

#2832

Lucas Maius

1522 - 1598 (76 years)

Lucas Maius was a German Protestant pastor who converted from Lutheranism to Calvinism, and playwright during the Protestant Reformation. Life Lucas Maius was born in Römhild in 1522, to mill owner Michael May and his wife, Martha Dörrer. In his early years, he moved with his parents to Hildburghausen, as his father took part in the German Peasants' War. There, he attended school in the winters, helping with the farmwork in the summer months. He learned a simple job as tailor. In 1548, he completed his studies at the University of Wittenberg, where he had attended lectures by Philipp Melanchthon.

#2833

Nikolaus von Laun

1300 - 1371 (71 years)

Nikolaus von Laun, O.E.S.A. was a Bohemian Augustinian friar and scholar. He served as the Prior Provincial of the large Province of Bavaria-Bohemia. Nikolaus was one of the first Theology professors at Charles University in Prague . He wrote several works in the subject area of homiletics. Between 1362 and his death in 1371 he served as a bishop.

#2834

John Sullivan

1861 - 1933 (72 years)

John Sullivan was an Irish Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Jesuits. Sullivan was known for his life of deep spiritual reflection and personal sacrifice; he is recognised for his dedicated work with the poor and spent much of his time walking and riding his bike to visit those who were troubled or ill in the villages around Clongowes Wood College, where he taught from 1907 until his death.

#2835

Robert Parker

1564 - 1614 (50 years)

Robert Parker was an English Puritan clergyman and scholar. He became minister of a separatist congregation in Holland where he died while in exile for his heterodoxy. The Revd. Cotton Mather wrote of Parker as "one of the greatest scholars in the English Nation, and in some sort the father of all Nonconformists of our day."

#2836

William Erbery

1604 - 1654 (50 years)

William Erbery or Erbury was a Welsh clergyman and radical Independent theologian. He was the father of the militant Quaker Dorcas Erbery. Life Erbery was born in Roath, Cardiff. He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, England in 1623.

#2837

Felix-Joseph Barbelin

1808 - 1869 (61 years)

The Reverend Felix-Joseph Barbelin, S.J., called the "Apostle of Philadelphia",was a 19th-century Jesuit priest influential in the development of the Catholic community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

#2838

Diego Ruiz de Montoya

1562 - 1632 (70 years)

Diego Ruiz de Montoya was a Spanish Jesuit theologian. Life He entered the Society of Jesus in 1572 and was professed on 22 July 1592. He taught philosophy in Granada, moral theology for one year in Baeza, and theology for about twenty years in Cordova and Seville. For a time he was rector of the College of Cordova, and represented his province, Andalusia, at the Sixth General Congregation.

#2839

Joseph McCormick

1733 - Present (293 years)

Joseph McCormick FRSE FSA was a Scottish clergyman who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1782 and was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783.

#2840

William Robertson

William Robertson was a Scottish Hebraist. He was educated at Edinburgh University, taught Hebrew in London from 1653–1680, then in 1680 was appointed lecturer in Hebrew at Cambridge University. Life A graduate of Edinburgh, he is identified by Edgar Cardew Marchant in the Dictionary of National Biography as probably the William Robertson who was laureated by Duncan Forester in April 1645. From 1653 to 1680 he lived in the City of London and taught Hebrew. In 1680 he was appointed university teacher of Hebrew at Cambridge at a salary of £20 a year.

#2841

Adam Boreel

1603 - 1667 (64 years)

Adam Boreel was a Dutch theologian and Hebrew scholar. He was one of the founders of the Amsterdam College; the Collegiants were also often called Boreelists, and regarded as a small sect. Others involved in the Collegiants were Daniel van Breen, Michiel Coomans, Jacob Otto van Halmael and the Mennonite Galenus Abrahamsz de Haan.

#2842

Christen Worm

1672 - 1737 (65 years)

Christen Willumsen Worm was a Danish theologian and Bishop of the Diocese of Zealand from 1711 until his death. Worm began his career as a scholar and a priest. Over the course of his tenure as bishop, his authority as primus inter pares was repeatedly challenged.

#2843

James Dixon

1758 - 1840 (82 years)

James Dixon was an Irish Catholic priest who was transported to Australia and in 1803 became the first Catholic priest permitted to minister there. Early life and education James Dixon was born in 1758 in Castlebridge, County Wexford. As was common for Irish priests, he trained for the priesthood overseas, at the universities of Salamanca and Louvain, then became curate at Crossabeg near Wexford. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798 he was arrested and tried for involvement and convicted, although there was considerable evidence that he was innocent. He was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to transportation for life to New South Wales.

#2844

Rajmund Zamanja

Rajmund Zamanja

1587 - 1647 (60 years)

Rajmund Zamanja or Raymundo Giamagnik was a Croatian theologian, philosopher and linguist from Dubrovnik. Biography He was born in Dubrovnik in 1587. He joined the Dominicans in 1601 from which he learned philosophy and theology. Four years later, in 1605, he went to the end of the study in Bologna. In 1612 he returned to Dubrovnik as a lecturer. Three times he was a general vicar of the Dominicans. Fourteen years later, in 1626, he established the first public gymnasium on the ground floor of the Dominican monastery . There he was a teacher and he emphasized the importance of learning Croat...

#2845

John Saltmarsh

1609 - 1647 (38 years)

John Saltmarsh was an English religious radical, "One of the most gentle tongued of controversialists", writer and preacher. He supported the Covenant and was chaplain in Thomas Fairfax's army. The Dictionary of National Biography describes his theology as "Calvinistic in its base, but improved by practical knowledge of men". William Haller called him "that strange genius, part poet and part whirling dervish". He preached Free Grace theology, and published on the topics of Peace, Love and Unity.

#2846

Hutchens Chew Bishop

1859 - 1937 (78 years)

The Reverend Dr. Hutchens Chew Bishop was an Episcopal priest who spent most of his career in New York City. He was rector of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Harlem for 47 years. The church is the oldest black Episcopal parish in New York. The church was founded by abolitionists who laid the first stone in 1819.

#2847

James Haldenston

James Haldenston

James Haldenston or James Haldenstoun was an Augustinian churchman from 15th-century Scotland. Probably from somewhere in eastern Fife, Haldenston became an Augustinian at St Andrews, earned several degrees on the continent, and became prior of May before becoming prior of St Andrews, head of the wealthiest and most important religious house in Scotland.

#2848

Robert Boyd

1578 - 1627 (49 years)

Robert Boyd of Trochrig was a Scottish theological writer, teacher and poet. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and after attending lectures by Robert Rollock, prosecuted his studies in France, and became a minister in the French Church. All accounts represent him as a most accomplished scholar. A friend said of him, with perhaps some exaggeration, that he was more eloquent in French than in his native tongue; and Livingstone tells us that he spoke Latin with perfect fluency, but that he had heard him say, if he had his choice, he would rather express himself in Greek than in any other language.

#2849

Eduard Poppius

1576 - 1624 (48 years)

Eduard Poppius was a Dutch pastor and theologian. He was one of the founders of the Remonstrant Brotherhood and a participant to the Synod of Dordrecht. Biography Poppius was a son of the pastor Pieter Eduardsz Poppius. He studied theology at Leiden University. After his studies, he became a minister in Amstelveen in 1599. From 1609 to 1619 he was a minister of the Reformed Church of Gouda. He was appointed in Gouda because of his choice for the Arminian ideas of Jacobus Arminius, who rejected the doctrine of double predestination.

#2850

Paul Eber

1511 - 1569 (58 years)

Paul Eber was a German Lutheran theologian, reformer and hymnwriter, known for the hymn for the dying, "Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott". Life He was born at Kitzingen in Franconia, and was educated at Nuremberg then Wittenberg, where he became the close friend of Philipp Melanchthon. In 1541 he was appointed professor of Latin grammar at Wittenberg, and in 1557 professor of the Old Testament at Wittenberg University. His range of learning was wide, and he published a handbook of Jewish history, a historical calendar intended to supersede the Roman Saints' Calendar, and a revision of t...

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