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,
#3051
John Robinson
1575 - 1625 (50 years)
John Robinson was the pastor of the "Pilgrim Fathers" before they left on the Mayflower. He became one of the early leaders of the English Separatists called Brownists, and is regarded as one of the founders of the Congregational Church.
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Peter of Limoges
1240 - 1306 (66 years)
Peter of Limoges was the author of A Moral Treatise on the Eye or On the Moral Eye , a popular guide for Catholic priests, composed at the University of Paris sometime in the 1270s or 1280s. The work depended heavily on Roger Bacon's earlier treatment of optics.
Go to Profile#3053
Niels Christian Gauslaa Danbolt
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Niels Christian Gauslaa Danbolt was a Norwegian professor of medicine who was a specialist in skin diseases. Danbolt-Closs syndrome was named after him and Karl Philipp Closs. Danbolt was born in Bergen, Norway. He was the son of Ole Dominicus Danielsen and Gesine Gauslaa . He was the brother of the missionary priest Lars Johan Danbolt and theology professor Erling Danbolt. He was the uncle of professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs and professor Gunnar Danbolt . His sister Johanna Sophie Danbolt was married to Bishop Olav Hagesæther.
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Johann Pfeffinger
1493 - 1573 (80 years)
Johann Pfeffinger was a significant theologian and Protestant Reformer. His life and work Devoting himself to the religious life, Pfeffinger became an acolyte at Salzburg in 1515, and soon afterward was made subdeacon and deacon. Receiving a dispensation from the regulations concerning canonical age, he was ordained priest and stationed at Reichenhall, Saalfelden, and Passau, where his clerical activity soon found great approbation. Suspected of Lutheran heresy, he went to Wittenberg in 1523, where he was cordially welcomed by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen.
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Stephan Gerlach
1546 - 1612 (66 years)
Stephan Gerlach was a German Lutheran theologian. Gerlach was an extremely important figure in the second half of the 16th century. He was tasked with a special mission in Constantinople, namely to establish an alliance between Orthodoxy and Lutheranism against Catholicism. This mission failed, nevertheless, he signed the Brest Union.
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Al-Qushayri
986 - 1072 (86 years)
'Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawazin Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī al-Naysābūrī was an Arab Muslim scholar, theologian, jurist, legal theoretician, commentator of the Qur’an, muhaddith, grammarian, spiritual master, orator, poet, and an eminent scholar who mastered a number of Islamic sciences. Al-Qushayri, combined the routine instruction of a Shafi'i law specialist and Hadith expert with a solid slant to mysticism and ascetic lifestyle.
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Edvard Sverdrup
1861 - 1923 (62 years)
Johan Edvard Sverdrup was a Norwegian educator, author and church leader. Sverdrup was one of the key theologians in the Church of Norway in the first few decades of the 1900s. Biography Sverdrup was born in Balestrand in Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. He was the son of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup . His father was a vicar and served as a member of the Norwegian Parliament. His uncle Johan Sverdrup founded the Liberal Party and became Prime Minister of Norway in 1884. His brother Jakob Sverdrup was Bishop of the Diecese of Bjørgvin and served as a member of the Norwegian Parliament. His brother ...
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Ralph Bathurst
1620 - 1704 (84 years)
Ralph Bathurst, FRS was an English theologian and physician. Early life He was born in Hothorpe, Northamptonshire in 1620 and educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry. He graduated with a B.A. degree from Trinity College, Oxford in 1638, where he had a family connection with the President, Ralph Kettell .
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René-Joseph de Tournemine
1661 - 1739 (78 years)
René-Joseph de Tournemine was a French Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He founded the Mémoires de Trévoux, the Jesuit learned journal published from 1701 to 1767, and assailed Nicolas Malebranche with the charges of atheism and Spinozism.
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Abu al-Barakat al-Nasafi
1240 - 1310 (70 years)
Abu al-Barakat al-Nasafi , was an eminent Hanafi scholar, Qur'an exegete , and a Maturidi theologian. He is perhaps best known for his Tafsir Madarik al-Tanzil wa Haqa'iq al-Ta'wil . He was one of the foremost figures of the classical period of Hanafi jurisprudence and one of the major scholars of the Maturidi school in the Sunni tradition, which developed in parallel with Hanafiyya, who made a tremendous contribution in the field of Islamic sciences in Central Asia, especially to the dissemination of the Hanafian order and teachings of the Maturidi school in the Islamic world and left a great...
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Luis de Montesinos
1552 - 1620 (68 years)
Luis de Montesinos was a Spanish theologian. Nothing is known of Montesinos' childhood. As an adult, he joined the Dominican Order and studied philosophy and theology in several Spanish universities. He was known there for both his scholarship and for his piety. After receiving his degree, he began teaching philosophy at university level, eventually becoming the foremost exponent of Thomistic theology at the University of Alcalá. Because of his great ability in persuading and explaining, he was given the surname Doctor clarus. He possessed a singular charm of manner which secured for him at once love and respect.
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Thomas Jones of Denbigh
1756 - 1820 (64 years)
Thomas Jones , called "Thomas Jones of Denbigh" to differentiate him from namesakes, was a Welsh Methodist clergyman, writer, editor and poet, active in North Wales. Life history Thomas Jones was born in 1756 at Aberchwiler in Denbighshire, but was educated at Caerwys and Holywell in Flintshire.
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John Eugenikos
1380 - 1453 (73 years)
John Eugenikos was a late Byzantine cleric and writer. He was the brother of Mark Eugenikos, and like him an ardent opponent of the Union of the Churches. Originally a notary and nomophylax at the Patriarchate of Constantinople, his opposition to the Union saw him exiled to the Despotate of the Morea, where he died. John participated briefly in the Council of Florence that ratified the Union, and also travelled to Trebizond and Mesembria.
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Nicolas Coeffeteau
1574 - 1623 (49 years)
Nicolas Coeffeteau was a French theologian, poet and historian born at Saint-Calais. He entered the Dominican order and lectured on philosophy at Paris, being also ordinary preacher to Henry IV, and afterwards ambassador at Rome.
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Urbanus Rhegius
1489 - 1541 (52 years)
Urbanus Henricus Rhegius or Urban Rieger was a Protestant Reformer who was active both in Northern and Southern Germany in order to promote Lutheran unity in the Holy Roman Empire. He was also a popular poet. Martin Luther referred to him as the "Bishop of Lower Saxony".
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John Arrowsmith
1602 - 1659 (57 years)
John Arrowsmith was an English theologian and academic. Life Arrowsmith was born near Gateshead and entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1616. In 1623 he entered the fellowship of St Catherine Hall, Cambridge.
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Walter Scott
1796 - 1861 (65 years)
Walter Scott was one of the four key early leaders in the Restoration Movement, along with Barton W. Stone, Thomas Campbell and Thomas' son Alexander Campbell. He was a successful evangelist and helped to stabilize the Campbell movement as it was separating from the Baptists.
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Otto von Gerlach
1801 - 1849 (48 years)
Karl Friedrich Otto von Gerlach was a German theologian and pastor from Berlin. He was the youngest of five children of Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach , first Lord Mayor of Berlin, and Agnes von Raumer , and brother of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach and Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach .
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Samuel Petto
1624 - 1711 (87 years)
Samuel Petto was an English Calvinist, a Cambridge graduate, and an Independent Puritan clergyman who primarily ministered in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was a prolific theologian who made a notable contribution to the development of British covenant theology by describing the link between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace and also demonstrating the relationship between justification and covenant theology. Additionally, he wrote two catechisms and a book advocating lay preaching. He also had close ties with a radical political movement.
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Johannes Wolleb
1589 - 1629 (40 years)
Johannes Wolleb was a Swiss Protestant theologian. He was a student of Amandus Polanus, and followed in the tradition of a Reformed scholasticism, a formal statement of the views arising from the Protestant Reformation.
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Charles Woodruff Shields
1825 - 1904 (79 years)
Charles Woodruff Shields was an American theologian. Biography Charles Woodruff Shields was born in New Albany, Indiana on April 4, 1825. He graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1844 and at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1847.
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Saint Ursula
400 - 385 (-15 years)
Ursula is a legendary Romano-British Christian saint. Her feast day in the pre-1970 Calendarium Romanum Generale is 21 October. There is little information about her and the anonymous group of holy virgins who accompanied and, on an uncertain date, were killed along with her at Cologne. They remain in the Roman Martyrology, although their commemoration does not appear in the simplified General Roman Calendar of the 1970 Missale Romanum.
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Oliver Chase Quick
1885 - 1944 (59 years)
Oliver Chase Quick was an English theologian, philosopher, and Anglican priest. Early life and education Oliver Quick was born on 21 June 1885 in Sedbergh, Yorkshire, the son of the educationist Robert Hebert Quick and Bertha Parr. He was educated at Harrow School and studied classics and theology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
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Josué de la Place
1596 - 1655 (59 years)
Josué de la Place was a Reformed theologian who was born at Saumur, France. He is known as the originator of the "mediate view" of the imputation of sin, whereby original sin is considered to be an inherent depravity in man. This view is opposed to the "federalist view", whereby the God immediately imputes original sin to all men, as a consequence of Adam's sin, and thus this original sin becomes the cause of actual sin.
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Tobias Lohner
1619 - 1697 (78 years)
Tobias Lohner was an Austrian Jesuit theologian. Life He entered the Society of Jesus on 30 August 1637, at Landsberg am Lech, and spent his first years in the classroom, teaching the classics. Later at Dillingen, he was professor, first of philosophy for seven years, then of speculative theology for four years, and finally of moral theology. He was rector of the colleges of Lucerne and Dillingen and master of novices.
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Alexander MacWhorter III
1822 - 1880 (58 years)
Alexander MacWhorter was an American theologian and author. Early life MacWhorter, the third of his name, was born in Newark, New Jersey on January 1, 1822. He was the only surviving child of Alexander C. MacWhorter and Frances C. G. MacWhorter. His paternal grandfather was fellow clergyman Alexander MacWhorter. He graduated from Yale College in 1842. He studied for three years in the Theological Department of Yale College, and was licensed to preach in 1844.
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Georg Joachim Mark
1726 - 1774 (48 years)
Georg Joachim Mark or Georg Joachim Märk was a German theologian. He was born at Schwerin March 1, 1726; was educated at the University of Kiel; in 1745 entered the ministry; and in 1747 was appointed a member of the philosophical faculty of his alma mater. In 1752 he accepted a call as librarian to the prince Louis of Mecklenburg- Schwerin; in 1758, as professor ordinary of divinity to the University of Kiel; in 1766 he was honored with the degree of doctor of divinity. He died on 5 March 1774.
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Pope Nicholas II
990 - 1061 (71 years)
Pope Nicholas II , otherwise known as Gerard of Burgundy, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 24 January 1059 until his death in 27 July 1061. At the time of his election, he was bishop of Florence. During his Papacy, Nicholas II successfully expanded the influence of the papacy in Milan and southern Italy. He was also responsible for passing papal election reforms.
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F. L. Cross
1900 - 1968 (68 years)
Frank Leslie Cross , usually cited as F. L. Cross, was an English patristics scholar and Anglican priest. He was the founder of the Oxford International Conference on Patristic Studies and editor of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church . He was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1968.
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Joseph Emerson
1821 - 1900 (79 years)
Joseph Emerson was an American minister and theologian. Emerson, son of Professor Ralph Emerson, D.D. and Eliza Emerson, was born on May 28, 1821, at Norfolk, Connecticut, where his father was at the time pastor of the Congregational church. In 1829 his father became Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Andover Theological Seminary, in Andover, Massachusetts, and he was prepared for college at Phillips Academy in that place. During his senior year at Yale College he was one of the editors of the Yale Literary Magazine. He graduated from Yale in 1841.
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George Burman Foster
1858 - 1919 (61 years)
George Burman Foster was part of the faculty in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago under the leadership of William Rainey Harper. His views were often thought by his contemporaries to support scientific naturalistic and humanistic views that contradict a Baptist view. A friendship with Clarence Darrow shows that despite Foster's progressive views he still valued and respected the views of a traditional Christian community.
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John Aikin
1713 - 1780 (67 years)
John Aikin was an English Unitarian scholar and theological tutor, closely associated with Warrington Academy, a prominent dissenting academy. Life Aikin was born in 1713 in London. His father, a linen-draper, came originally from Kirkcudbright, in southern Scotland. He was placed for a short time as French clerk in a mercantile house, but entered Kibworth Academy, then run by Philip Doddridge, for whom Aikin was the first pupil. He then went to Aberdeen University, where the anti-Calvinist opinions of the tutors gradually led him to Low Arianism, as it was then called, which afterwards became the distinguishing feature of the Warrington Academy.
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Gordon Selwyn
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Edward Gordon Selwyn was an English Anglican priest and theologian, who served as Warden of Radley College from 1913 to 1919; Rector of Red Hill, near Havant. He was Dean of Winchester from 1931 to 1958. He wrote sermons and other books and was the editor of the liberal Anglo-Catholic journal Theology during the first fourteen years of its existence, 1920–34.
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Claude Chantelou
1617 - 1664 (47 years)
Claude Chantelou was a Benedictine Patristic scholar and writer. Having spent some time in the Order of Fontevrault, he left it to become a Benedictine in the Congregation of Saint-Maur, in which he made his profession, February 7, 1640, at Toulouse. When the General Chapter of 1651 ordained that two religious be entrusted with the preparation of a history of the congregation, Chantelou was one of the appointees, and from that time until his death resided at Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
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Johann Forster
1496 - 1556 (60 years)
Johann Forster Forsterus, Förster or Forstheim was a Lutheran theologian, Protestant reformer and professor of Hebrew. He took part in the Protestation at Speyer. Johann-Forster studied Hebrew at the University of Ingolstadt under Johannes Reuchlin and continued his studies at the University of Leipzig and the University of Wittenberg. Being 24 years old, he was appointed professor for Hebrew at Zwickau in Saxony in 1525. He married his wife Margarethe née Fischer in Leipzig in the same year. After Zwickau, his next waystations then included Wittenberg , Augsburg , Tübingen , Regensburg , Nur...
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Georg Witzel
1501 - 1573 (72 years)
Georg Witzel was a German theologian. Life He received his primary and academic education in the schools of Schmalkalden, Eisenach, and Halle, and then spent two years at the University of Erfurt, and seven months at the University of Wittenberg. In keeping with his father's wishes, Witzel was ordained a priest in 1520, and was appointed Vicar of Vacha. In 1524, however, the teachings of Martin Luther attracted him.
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Valerius Herberger
1562 - 1627 (65 years)
Valerius Herberger was a German Lutheran preacher and theologian. Life He was born at Fraustadt, Silesia . He studied for three years at Freystadt in Silesia , and then entered the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In 1582 he went to Leipzig University.
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Joannes Molanus
1533 - 1585 (52 years)
Joannes Molanus , often cited simply as Molanus, is the Latinized name of Jan Vermeulen or Van der Meulen, an influential Counter Reformation Catholic theologian of Louvain University, where he was Professor of Theology, and Rector from 1578. Born at Lille , he was a priest and canon of St. Peter's Church, Leuven, where he died.
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Reinerius Saccho
1300 - 1263 (-37 years)
Reinerius Saccho was an Italian Dominican inquisitor. Biography Saccho was born at Piacenza about the beginning of the thirteenth century; died about 1263. It is generally said that he died in 1258 or 1259, but this is contradicted by the Brief of Urban IV which calls him to Rome on 21 July 1262.
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Lorenzo Campeggio
1474 - 1539 (65 years)
Lorenzo Campeggio was an Italian cardinal and politician. He was the last cardinal protector of England. Life Campeggio was born in Milan, the eldest of five sons. In 1500, he took his doctorate in canon and civil law at Bologna and married Francesca Guastavillani with whom he had five children. When she died in 1509, Campeggio began an ecclesiastical career under Pope Julius II's patronage.
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Philip of the Blessed Trinity
1603 - 1671 (68 years)
Philip of the Blessed Trinity was a French Discalced Carmelite theologian and missionary. Life He took the habit at Lyon where he made his profession on 8 September 1621. Choosing the missionary life, he studied in Paris and two years at the seminary in Rome, proceeded in February 1629 to the Holy Land and Persia, and then to Goa where he became prior of the Order convent and teacher of philosophy and theology . After the martyrdom of his pupil Dionysius, a Nativitate, and Redemptus a Cruce on 29 November 1638, Philip collected evidence and set out for Rome in 1639 to introduce the cause of t...
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Casto Innocenzio Ansaldi
1710 - 1780 (70 years)
Casto Innocenzio Ansaldi was an Italian professor, theologian and archaeologist. Biography In 1726 Ansaldi entered the Dominican Order at Parma, where he pursued his preparatory studies. In 1733 he was a student of the College of St. Thomas in Rome, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum where he attached himself to Giuseppe Agostino Cardinal Orsi. In 1735 he taught philosophy at Santa Caterina in Naples, and the following year received the chair of metaphysics at the University of Naples. However, in 1737 he was forced to resign after receiving orders from his superiors to move to Bologna.
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Henry Robert Stephens
1665 - 1723 (58 years)
Henry Robert Stephens was a Belgian Jesuit theologian. Life Stephens was born at Liège and entered the Society of Jesus on 7 September 1683. For over twenty years he was attached to the episcopal seminary of Liège, first as professor of dogmatic theology and later as its superior. During this period the Jansenists were active in Belgium, both in attacking the Jesuits and in opposing the papal decrees condemnatory of Jansenism. All of Father Stephens's published works were occasioned by these attacks.
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John Anderson
1805 - 1855 (50 years)
John Anderson was a Scottish missionary and the founder of the mission of the Free Church of Scotland at Madras, India. Early life and education John Anderson was born at Craig Farm, Kirkpatrick Durham, in Galloway, on 23 May 1805. He was the eldest son in a family of nine, his father being blind. He received the rudiments of his education in the parish schools, and in his twenty-second year entered the University of Edinburgh, where he obtained prizes in Latin and in moral philosophy, distinguishing himself by his facility in Latin composition, and studying theology and church history under Thomas Chalmers and David Welch.
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Pender Hodge Cudlip
1835 - 1911 (76 years)
Pender Hodge Cudlip was an English Anglican High Church clergyman, theologian and writer. Born in Cornwall, he became well known as a preacher in Devon and spent most of his clerical life there. As the husband of writer Annie Hall Cudlip, née Thomas, he self-published a series of books on religion and theology between 1895 and 1905.
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Hector Gottfried Masius
1653 - 1709 (56 years)
Hector Gottfried Masius was a German Lutheran theologian serving as vice-chancellor of the University of Copenhagen from 1691 to 1692 and, again, from 1700 to 1701. He acquired wealth through marriages and owned a number of estates. His children were ennobled in 1712 with the surname von der Maase.
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Johannes Matthiae Gothus
1592 - 1670 (78 years)
Johannes Matthiae Gothus was a Swedish Lutheran Bishop of Strängnäs and a professor of Uppsala University, the rector of the Collegium illustrious, Collegium Illustre in Stockholm and the most eminent teacher in Sweden during the seventeenth century. He was Bishop of Strängnäs from 1643 to 1664.
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Theodore Abu Qurrah
750 - 820 (70 years)
Theodore Abū Qurrah was a 9th-century Melkite bishop and theologian who lived in the early Islamic period. Biography Theodore was born around 750 in the city of Edessa , in northern Mesopotamia , and was the Chalcedonian Bishop of the nearby city of Harran until some point during the archbishopric of Theodoret of Antioch . Michael the Syrian, who disapproved of Theodore, later claimed that the archbishop had deposed Theodore for heresy, although this is unlikely. Between 813 and 817 he debated with the Monophysites of Armenia at the court of Ashot Msakeri.
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Richard Watson
1737 - 1816 (79 years)
Richard Watson was an Anglican bishop and academic, who served as the Bishop of Llandaff from 1782 to 1816. He wrote some notable political pamphlets. In theology, he belonged to an influential group of followers of Edmund Law that included also John Hey and William Paley.
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Johannes Aesticampianus
1457 - 1520 (63 years)
Johannes Rhagius Aesticampianus was a German theologian and humanist. Life Johannes Rak was born in 1457 in Sommerfeld . His father, Matthias Rak, died young, and Johannes' grandfather Martin Rak, a mayor of Sommerfeld, saw to his education. Johannes matriculated at the University of Kraków on 19 May 1491, when he studied natural history and astronomy. In Kraków, he came under the influence of Conrad Celtes.
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