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,
#3001
Franz Georg Benkert
1790 - 1859 (69 years)
Franz Georg Benkert was a German Roman Catholic theologian and historical writer. Life Benkert was born at Nordheimordheim, near the mountain district of Rhön, Germany. After finishing his studies at the gymnasium in Münnerstadt he studied theology at Würzburg and was ordained priest in 1816. He was first a curate at Gaurettersheim and in 1821, was made vice-principal of the theological seminary at Würzburg.
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Frederick Homes Dudden
1874 - 1955 (81 years)
Frederick Homes Dudden was an academic administrator and theological scholar. He was Chaplain to King George V and George VI , Master of Pembroke College, Oxford and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University .
Go to Profile#3003
William Turner
1871 - 1936 (65 years)
William Turner was an Irish-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo in New York from 1919 until his death in 1936. He was ordained in 1893, and spent his early years as a priest teaching in various institutions. Upon his appointment as Bishop of Buffalo he was occupied with pastoral duties in a very large diocese.
Go to Profile#3004
Joannes Zonaras
1074 - 1145 (71 years)
Joannes or John Zonaras was a Byzantine Greek historian, chronicler and theologian who lived in Constantinople . Under Emperor Alexios I Komnenos he held the offices of head justice and private secretary to the emperor, but after Alexios' death, he retired to the monastery on the Island of Hagia Glykeria, , where he spent the rest of his life writing books.
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Gabriel Gifford
1554 - 1629 (75 years)
Gabriel Gifford OSB was an English Roman Catholic Benedictine monk who became Archbishop of Reims. Life Born William Gifford in Hampshire to John Gifford, Esq., of Weston-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Throckmorton, Knight of Coughton, Warwickshire, he was sent to Oxford in 1569, where he was entrusted to the care of John Bridgewater, President of Lincoln College, who was a Catholic at heart.
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Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius
1788 - 1843 (55 years)
Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius was a German Protestant theologian and divine born in Merseburg. He was the brother of philologist Detlev Karl Wilhelm Baumgarten-Crusius . Life In 1805 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he studied theology and philology, becoming a university minister in 1810. In 1812 he became an associate professor of theology at the University of Jena, where in 1817, he attained a full professorship. He would remain at Jena for the rest of his life.
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Robert Rollock
1555 - 1599 (44 years)
Robert Rollock was Scottish academic and minister in the Church of Scotland, and the first regent and first principal of the University of Edinburgh. Born into a noble family, he distinguished himself during his education at the University of St Andrews, which led to him being appointed regent of the newly created college in Edinburgh in 1583, and its first principal in 1586.
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Christian Gottlob Leberecht Großmann
1783 - 1857 (74 years)
Christian Gottlob Leberecht Großmann was a German theologian. From 1802 he studied theology at the University of Jena, receiving his doctorate in 1805. From 1808 to 1811 he served as a substitute minister in his hometown of Prießnitz, and afterwards, was a minister in Gröbitz and an ecclesiastical superintendent in Altenburg . In 1829 he was named pastor and superintendent at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig.
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George Harris
1844 - 1922 (78 years)
George Harris Jr. was an American minister, academic, and college president. Early life and education He was born at East Machias, Maine to George Harris Sr. and Mary Ann Palmer. He attended Washington Academy and graduated from Amherst College in 1866 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1869. He received the D.D. degree from Harvard, Yale and Amherst, and the LL.D. degree from Dartmouth and Williams.
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Philippe de Mornay
1549 - 1623 (74 years)
Philippe de Mornay , seigneur du Plessis Marly, usually known as Du-Plessis-Mornay or Mornay Du Plessis, was a French Protestant writer and member of the anti-monarchist Monarchomaques. Biography He was born in Buhy, now situated in Val-d'Oise. His mother had leanings toward Protestantism, but his father tried to counteract her influence by sending him to the of the University of Paris. On his father's death in 1559, however, the family formally adopted the reformed faith. Mornay studied law and jurisprudence at the University of Heidelberg in 1565 and the following year Hebrew and German at the University of Padua.
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David Nelson Beach
1848 - 1926 (78 years)
David Nelson Beach was an American theologian, born at South Orange, N. J., and a brother of Harlan Page Beach. David Beach graduated from Yale College in 1872 and from the Yale Divinity School in 1876. In the same year he was ordained a Congregational minister and became pastor at Westerly, R. I. He subsequently served in pastorates at Wakefield, Mass., Cambridge, Mass., Minneapolis, and Denver. From 1903–1921, he was President and Professor of Sacred Rhetoric at Bangor Theological Seminary in Bangor, Maine. He took a prominent part in civic and social movements and during his residence at Cambridge was prominent in ridding that city of saloonss.
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Ludwig Lavater
1527 - 1586 (59 years)
Ludwig Lavater was a Swiss Reformed theologian working in the circle of his father-in-law, Heinrich Bullinger. He served as Archdeacon at the Grossmünster in Zurich and briefly Antistes of the Zurich church as the successor of Rudolf Gwalther.
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Leon J. Wood
1918 - 1977 (59 years)
Leon James Wood was an American theologian. He is the author of one of the few books on the Holy Spirit as portrayed in the Old Testament as opposed to the New Testament. Wood wrote, "The evidence that spiritual renewal, or regeneration, was true of such Old Testament people lies mainly in two directions. One is that these people lived in a way possible only for those who had experienced regeneration, and the other is the avenue of logical deduction that argues back from New Testament truth."
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Josep Climent i Avinent
1706 - 1781 (75 years)
Josep Climent i Avinent was a Spanish bishop of Barcelona. Life Born at Castellón de la Plana, Valencia, he studied and afterwards professed theology at the University of Valencia, worked for several years as parish priest, and was consecrated Bishop of Barcelona in 1766; he resigned his see in 1775.
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Jean Hessels
1522 - 1566 (44 years)
Jan Hessels, Jean Leonardi Hasselius or Jean Hessels was a Flemish theologian and controversialist at the University of Louvain. He was a defender of Baianism. Life Hessels was born at Mechlin in 1522, and obtained his doctorate in theology from Louvain. He had been teaching for eight years in Park Abbey, the Premonstratensian house near Louvain, when in 1560, he was appointed professor of theology at the university. Like Michael Baius, who was his senior colleague, Hessels preferred drawing his theology from the Church Fathers, especially from Augustine of Hippo, rather than from the Schoolmen.
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Walter Matthews
1881 - 1973 (92 years)
Walter Robert Matthews was an Anglican priest, theologian, and philosopher. Early life and education Born on 22 September 1881 in Camberwell, London, to parents Philip Walter Matthews, a banker, and Sophia Alice Self, he was educated at Wilson's School and trained for the priesthood at King's College London.
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Muhammad al-Tahir ibn Ashur
1879 - 1973 (94 years)
Muhammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr was a graduate of University of Ez-Zitouna and a well known Islamic scholar. He studied classical Islamic scholarship with reform-minded scholars. He became a judge then Shaykh al-Islām in 1932. He was a writer and author on the subject of reforming Islamic education and jurisprudence. He is best remembered for his Qur'anic exegesis, al-Tahrir wa'l-tanwir .
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Antoine-Noé de Polier de Bottens
1713 - 1783 (70 years)
Antoine-Noé Polier de Bottens was an 18th-century Swiss Protestant theologian. Biography Antoine-Noé Polier de Bottens descended from a noble family from the French Rouergue that they left for Switzerland in the 16th century to escape persecution as Huguenots and not have to abjure their Protestant faith. The first known member of this family was Jean Polier, who died in 1602 after being Secretary of the Embassy of France in Geneva, a family which included scholars, professors and officers who served with distinction in the armies of most major powers.
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Herbert Edward Ryle
1856 - 1925 (69 years)
Herbert Edward Ryle was an English Old Testament scholar and Anglican bishop, successively serving as the Bishop of Exeter, the Bishop of Winchester and the Dean of Westminster. Early life Ryle was born in Onslow Square, South Kensington, London, on 25 May 1856, the second son of John Charles Ryle , the first Bishop of Liverpool, and his second wife, Jessie Elizabeth Walker. Herbert Ryle was three years old when his mother died, and in 1861 his father married Henrietta Clowes, who was a loving mother to her stepchildren. Ryle and his brothers and sisters were brought up in their father's cou...
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Ortwin
1475 - 1542 (67 years)
Hardwin von Grätz , better known in English as Ortwin , was a German humanist scholar and theologian. Ortwin was born in Holtwick and died in Cologne, Germany. He was raised by his uncle, Johannes von Grätz, in Deventer. In 1501 he left to pursue philosophical studies at the University of Cologne. After joining Kyuk Burse, Ortwin became licensed in 1505, attained Masters level in 1506, and became an Art Professor in 1507. He supplemented his salary by proofing documents for the Quentell printing house and wrote introductions and poetic dedications in the volumes of classical authors of the Mi...
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Marcus Dods
1834 - 1909 (75 years)
Marcus Dods was a Scottish divine and controversial biblical scholar. He was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He served as Principal of New College, Edinburgh. Life He was born at Belford, Northumberland, the youngest son of Rev Marcus Dods, a minister of the Church of Scotland and his wife, Sarah Pallister.
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John Henry Augustus Bomberger
1817 - 1890 (73 years)
John Henry Augustus Bomberger was a German Reformed clergyman. He was president of Ursinus College, and did a translation and condensation of the Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.
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William Julius Mann
1819 - 1892 (73 years)
William Julius Mann was an American Lutheran theologian and author, born in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied there and at Tübingen and was ordained in 1841. Three years later he was invited by his friend Dr. Philip Schaff to come to the United States and settled in Philadelphia. There he was assistant pastor and pastor of St. Michael's and Zion's Church. From its establishment in 1864 almost to his death he was professor of symbolics at the Lutheran Theological Seminary. With Dr. Schaff he edited Der deutsche Kirchenfreund. His daughter, Emma T. Mann, wrote his Life, . His german and englis...
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John Downame
1571 - 1652 (81 years)
John Downame was an English Puritan clergyman and theologian in London, who came to prominence in the 1640s, when he worked closely with the Westminster Assembly. He is now remembered for his writings.
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William Archibald Spooner
1844 - 1930 (86 years)
William Archibald Spooner was a British clergyman and long-serving Oxford don. He was most notable for his absent-mindedness, and for supposedly mixing up the syllables in a spoken phrase, with unintentionally comic effect. Such phrases became known as spoonerisms, and are often used humorously. Many spoonerisms have been invented and attributed to Spooner.
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Philip Faber
1564 - 1630 (66 years)
Philip Faber was an Italian Franciscan theologian, philosopher and noted commentator on Duns Scotus. Life In 1582 he entered the Order of St. Francis , at Cremona. After completing his studies, he taught in various monastic schools till he was appointed professor of philosophy in 1603, and in 1606 professor of theology, at the University of Padua, where he was highly successful as a lecturer.
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Nicholas Magni
1355 - 1435 (80 years)
Nicholas Magni was a late medieval theologian, a professor at Prague University and Heidelberg University. Life Born in Jawor, Silesia, he studied in Vienna and in Prague , where he lived in a Polish college and represented Polish nation. He studied under professor Matthew of Krakow . Before 1392 he received priestly ordination. From 1392 he served as a priest of St. Gallus Church in Prague - Old Town, from about 1395 he started with lectures on theology from 1397 as a professor of theology and rector of Prague University. In 1402, he went to Heidelberg, where he was likewise made rector in 1406.
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Georg Heinrich Häberlin
1644 - 1699 (55 years)
Georg Heinrich Häberlin was a Lutheran theologian of Germany. Life Georg Heinrich Häberlin was born at Stuttgart on 30 September 1644. He studied at Tübingen, became deacon in 1668, doctor and professor of theology in 1681, member of the consistory and preacher in 1692, and died on 20 August 1699.
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Pierre François le Courayer
1681 - 1776 (95 years)
Pierre François le Courayer was a French Catholic theological writer, for many years an expatriate in England. Life Pierre François le Courayer was born at Rouen. While canon regular and librarian of the abbey of St Genevieve at Paris, he conducted a correspondence with Archbishop William Wake on the subject of episcopal succession in England, which supplied him with material for his work, Dissertation sur la validité des ordinations des Anglais et sur la succession des évéques de l'Eglise anglicane, avec les preuves justificatives des faits avancés , published anonymously in 1723 with a fake publication location of Brussels.
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William Barret
1561 - 1659 (98 years)
William Barret was an English divine. Life He matriculated as a pensioner of Trinity College, Cambridge, on 1 February 1579–80. He proceeded to his M.A. degree in 1588, and was soon afterwards elected fellow of Caius College.
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Johannes Vorst
1623 - 1676 (53 years)
Johannes Vorst was a Protestant theologian of Germany. Vorst was born in Wieselburg in 1623. He studied, at Wittenberg, and was appointed in 1653 rector at Flensburg. In 1655 the Rostock University made him a licentiate of theology, and shortly afterwards he was called to Berlin as rector of the Joachimsthal Gymnasium. In 1660 he resigned his position, and became librarian to the elector of Brandenburg. He died on 4 August 1676.
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John Gerard
1564 - 1637 (73 years)
John Gerard was a priest of the Society of Jesus who operated a secret ministry of the underground Catholic Church in England during the Elizabethan era. He was born into the English nobility as the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard at Old Bryn Hall, near Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire. After attending seminary and being ordained abroad, Gerard returned to England covertly shortly after the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. Fr. Gerard not only successfully hid from the English authorities for eight years before his capture but also endured extensive torture, escaped from the Tower of London,...
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Joseph Lookstein
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Joseph Hyman Lookstein was a Russian-born American rabbi who served as spiritual leader of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and was a leader in Orthodox Judaism, including his service as president of the Rabbinical Council of America and of the cross-denominational Synagogue Council of America and New York Board of Rabbis. He was President of Bar-Ilan University from 1957 to 1967.
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Wellesley Tudor Pole
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Wellesley Tudor Pole OBE was a spiritualist and early British Baháʼí. He authored many pamphlets and books and was a lifelong pursuer of religious and mystical questions and visions, being particularly involved with spiritualism and the Baháʼí Faith as well as the quest for the Holy Grail of Arthurian Legend and founded the Silent Minute campaign, both of which were followed internationally. Some of his visions have been accepted by some people as true. Late in life he resuscitated the Trust running the Chalice Well.
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Willem van Blijenbergh
1632 - 1696 (64 years)
Willem van Blijenbergh was a Dutch grain broker and amateur Calvinist theologian. He was born and lived in Dordrecht. He engaged in philosophical correspondence with Baruch Spinoza regarding the problem of evil. Their correspondence consisted of four letters each, written between December 1664 to June 1665. Blijenbergh visited Spinoza at his home in June, after which their correspondence ended.
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Ernst Friedrich von Ockel
1742 - 1816 (74 years)
Ernst Friedrich Ockel was Lutheran theologian, writer and politician from the duchy of Courland , born 16 November 1742, in Mengeringhausen . Son of a Lutheran minister and school rector in Mengeringhausen, studied in the Halle University.
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George Kitchin
1827 - 1912 (85 years)
George William Kitchin was the first Chancellor of the University of Durham, from the institution of the role in 1908 until his death in 1912. He was also the last Dean of Durham to govern the university.
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Luca Pinelli
1542 - 1607 (65 years)
Luca Pinelli was an Italian jesuit and theologian. Life Born at Melfi, Basilicata, to a family from the Republic of Genoa, in 1562 he entered the Society of Jesus, where he taught theology and philosophy. Subsequently, he was sent to Germany and France to combat Protestantism, teaching theology at the universities of Ingolstadt and Pont-a-Mousson . Under his influence, the two universities adopted Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas as a textbook.
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Ivan Ančić
1624 - 1685 (61 years)
Ivan Ančić was a Croatian theologian and writer. He was born in Lipa near Tomislavgrad in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, and likely finished his basic education at the Franciscan Province of Bosna Srebrena monastery in Rama, where he was ordained as a priest in 1643. He attended gymnasium in Velika and finished his philosophy-theology studies in Cremona , Brixen and Naples .
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Pierre Fallon
1912 - 1985 (73 years)
Pierre Fallon was a Belgian Jesuit priest, missionary in India, Professor of French literature at the University of Calcutta. In 1950 he founded the dialogue centre Shanti Bhavan in Calcutta; in 1960 the similar Shanti Sadan in North Calcutta; and later took charge of Shanti Nir.
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Georgius Hornius
1620 - 1670 (50 years)
Georgius Hornius was a German historian and geographer, and professor of history at Leiden University from 1653 until his death. Life He was born in Kemnath, Upper Palatinate as the son of the superintendent of the Reformed church there. His family was forced to move away in the wake of the Catholic victory at White Mountain when Horn was still an infant. In 1635, he visited the gymnasium in Nuremberg, and in 1637 he was enrolled in University of Altdorf as a student of theology and medicine. He later worked as a private tutor, in Gröningen and later in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic. In Leiden, he was also enrolled as a student of Friedrich Spanheim.
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Daniel Chamier
1565 - 1621 (56 years)
Daniel Chamier was a Huguenot minister in France, founder of the Academy of Montpellier and author. Life and work Chamier was born at the castle of Le Mont, near Mocas and west of Grenoble. His father was from Avignon and a Protestant convert, a pastor at Montélimar. Daniel studied at the now defunct University of Orange and at Geneva under Theodore Beza and Antoine de la Faye , in the period 1583 to 1589. He was ordained minister at Montpellier, and about 1595 succeeded his father at Montélimar.
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Thomas of Sutton
1230 - 1320 (90 years)
Thomas of Sutton was an English Dominican theologian, an early Thomist. He was ordained as deacon in 1274 by Walter Giffard, and joined the Dominicans in the 1270s; he may have been a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford before that. He became doctor of theology in 1282.
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Pedro de Alba y Astorga
1602 - 1667 (65 years)
Pedro de Alba y Astorga was a Friar Minor of the Strict Observance, and a voluminous writer on theological subjects, generally in defense of the Immaculate Conception. He was born at Carbajales and died in Belgium. He took the Franciscan habit in Peru.
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Ezekiel Robinson
1815 - 1894 (79 years)
Ezekiel Gilman Robinson was an American Baptist clergyman, theologian and educator, born at Attleboro, Massachusetts, and educated at Brown University and at Newton Theological Institution. He preached at Norfolk, Virginia, and at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was professor of Hebrew and biblical interpretation in the Western Theological Seminary , and in 1849 accepted a call to a church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Three years later he was appointed professor of theology in Rochester Theological Seminary and in 1868 was made its president. From 1872 to 1889 he was president of Brown University, and from 1893 to his death he occupied the chair of ethics and apologetics at the University of Chicago.
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Giuseppe Agnelli
1621 - 1706 (85 years)
Giuseppe Agnelli , was a Roman Catholic author, chiefly known for his catechetical and devotional works. He entered the Society of Jesus, in Rome, in 1637. He was professor of moral theology, and rector of the colleges of Montepulciano, Macerata, and Ancona, and also Consultor of the Inquisition of the March of Ancona. He passed the last thirty-three years of his life in the professed house in Rome, where he died. He wrote:"Il Catechismo annuale". It was adapted to the use of parish priests, and contained explanations of the Gospels for every Sunday of the year. It went through three editions.A week's devotion to St.
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Richard Turner
Richard Turner was an English Protestant reformer and Marian exile during the reign of Queen Bloody Mary. Life Born in Staffordshire, he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow. He graduated B.A. on 19 July 1524, M.A. on 12 July 1529, and B.D. on 27 January 1536, and supplicated for D.D. in 1552. On 25 January 1536 he was elected to a perpetual chantry in the king's college at Windsor. He was appointed by Ralph Morice, Thomas Cranmer's secretary, to be rector of Chartham, Kent, where he neglected Catholic rites.
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Bénédict Turrettini
1588 - 1631 (43 years)
Bénédict Turrettini , the son of Francesco Turrettini, a native of Lucca, who settled in Geneva in 1579, was born at Zürich on 9 November 1588. He was ordained a pastor in Geneva in 1612, and became professor of theology in 1618. He became a citizen of the Republic of Geneva in 1627.
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Alessandro Luzzago
1551 - 1602 (51 years)
Alessandro Luzzago was an Italian nobleman and organizer of Catholic charities. He is venerated in the Catholic Church, having been declared Venerable in 1899 by Pope Leo XIII. Life Luzzago was the son of Girolamo Luzzago and Paola Peschiera. He was baptised on November 8 in the Church of Santa Maria in Calchera. The Luzzago family was one of the most important noble families of Brescia. His mother was an early collaborator of Saint Angela Merici.
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Elias Burneti of Bergerac
1201 - 1201 (0 years)
Elias Burneti of Bergerac was a Dominican master of theology in the 13th century. According to Kaeppeli, he lectured in Montpellier in the years 1246 through 1247. Later, he became the regent master of the Dominicans in Paris around the years 1248–1256. His works include Excerpta and Compendium Fratris Erkenfridi found in Archivum fratrum praedicatorum.
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