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,
#3501
Festus Hommius
1576 - 1642 (66 years)
Festus Hommius was a Dutch Calvinist theologian. Life He was born in Jelsum, into a noted Frisian family. He studied from 1593 at the University of Franeker under Sibrandus Lubbertus, travelled in 1595 to the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle and completed his studies from 1596 at the University of Leiden. Around 1597 Hommius became preacher of Warmond, near Leiden.
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Ludolph of Saxony
1300 - 1377 (77 years)
Ludolph of Saxony , also known as Ludolphus de Saxonia and Ludolph the Carthusian, was a German Roman Catholic theologian of the fourteenth century. His principal work, first printed in the 1470s, was the Vita Christi . It had significant influence on the development of techniques for Christian meditation by introducing the concept of immersing and projecting oneself into a Biblical scene about the life of Jesus which became popular among the Devotio Moderna community, and later influenced Ignatius of Loyola.
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Nicolas Cop
1501 - 1540 (39 years)
Nicolas Cop , rector of the University of Paris in late 1533, from 10 October 1533, was a Swiss Protestant Reformer and friend of John Calvin. Nicolas Cop and his brother Michel Cop, sons of the king's physician, had become Calvin's friends during their shared time at the Collège de Montaigu. They were sons of Guillaume Cop, a native of Basel who became physician to the king of France, Francis I.
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Arsenie Boca
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Arsenie Boca was a Romanian priest, theologian, mystic, and artist. He was persecuted by the Romanian Communist Party. Born in Vața de Sus, Hunedoara County, he died at Sinaia Monastery and was buried at in Silvașu de Sus village. In a poll of the Romanian public conducted by Romanian Television in 2006, Boca was voted 79th among 100 Greatest Romanians.
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Henry Goodwin Smith
1860 - 1940 (80 years)
Henry Goodwin Smith was a United States theologian, the son of Henry Boynton Smith. He was pastor of the Freehold Presbyterian Church in 1886-1896, and from 1897 to 1903 was professor of systematic theology in Lane Theological Seminary.
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Guillaume-André-Réné Baston
1741 - 1825 (84 years)
Guillaume-André-René Baston was a French theologian. Life He studied theology at St. Sulpice in Paris and finished his studies at Angers. He was then appointed professor of theology at Rouen. During the French Revolution he wrote against the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Having refused to take the oath, he was obliged to go into exile , first to London, then to Holland, and finally to Coesfeld in Westphalia. In 1803 he returned to Rouen, where he was appointed vicar-general and dean of the chapter by Archbishop Cambacérès. As a Gallican, he won the favor of Napoleon, who appointed him Bishop of Séez , and the chapter of the cathedral accepted him as capitular vicar.
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Jan Długosz
1415 - 1480 (65 years)
Jan Długosz , also known in Latin as Johannes Longinus, was a Polish priest, chronicler, diplomat, soldier, and secretary to Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki of Kraków. He is considered Poland's first historian.
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Edward Everett Nourse
1863 - 1929 (66 years)
Edward Everett Nourse, D.D. was an American Congregational theologian. Nourse was born at Bayfield, Wisconsin. He studied at the College and the Academy at Lake Forest, Illinois, at Macalester College in Minnesota, Hartford Theological Seminary , and in Europe at the University of Jena
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Johann Michael Reu
1869 - 1943 (74 years)
Johann Michael Reu was a German - American Lutheran theologian, author and educator. Johann Michael Reu was born at Diebach, in Bavaria, Germany. He was the youngest of ten children. His father died when Reu was only two years old. Reu studied from 1887 to 1889 at the nearby Neuendettelsau Mission Institute which had been founded by Wilhelm Loehe in 1841.
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Johannes Alberti
1698 - 1762 (64 years)
Johannes Alberti was a Dutch theologian. Early life Alberti was the son of a flour miller. He did not regularly attend school due to the distance between his parents' house and the local school. However, the miller's apprentice, Jan Mulder, taught the boy to read. He made good progress, and soon the teacher took his student with him to the church. To his amazement, he noticed that the boy kept his attention on the pulpit. When Alberti returned home, his mother asked him if he remembered anything that had been said. He stood upon a wooden crate in the living room, recited the text of the sermon, and declaimed parts of it with such simplicity that his mother had tears in her eyes.
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Henry Owen
1716 - 1795 (79 years)
Henry Owen was a Welsh theologian and biblical scholar. In biblical scholarship he discussed the date of publication and the form and manner of the composition of the four canonical gospel accounts.
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Johannes Bogerman
1576 - 1637 (61 years)
Johannes Bogerman was a Frisian Protestant divine. He was born in Upleward , the son of a preacher. From 1591 onwards, he studied in Franeker, Heidelberg, Geneva, Zürich, Lausanne, Oxford and Cambridge. In 1599, he became pastor in Sneek, 1603 in Enkhuizen and 1604 in Leeuwarden. In 1636, he became professor for theology in Franeker.
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Johann Faber
1478 - 1541 (63 years)
Johann Faber was a Catholic theologian known for his writings opposing the Protestant Reformation and the growing Anabaptist movement. Biography Johann Faber, the son of a blacksmith, was born in Leutkirch, Swabia and studied theology and canon law at Tübingen and Freiburg in the Breisgau region and was made doctor of sacred theology in Freiburg. He eventually became minister of Lindau, Vicar-General of Constance in 1517, Chaplain and confessor to King Ferdinand I of Austria in 1524, and Bishop of Vienna in 1530.
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Marie Huber
1695 - 1753 (58 years)
Marie Huber was a Genevan writer on theology and related subjects, as well as a translator and editor, at a time when it was rare for a female writer to write about theology. Huber was a proponent of universalism, and was considered by some a deist. Her Letters Concerning the Religion Essential to Man are known to have been read, in translation, by Robert Burns.
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Albert Barnes
1798 - 1870 (72 years)
Albert Barnes was an American theologian, clergyman, abolitionist, temperance advocate, and author. Barnes is best known for his extensive Bible commentary and notes on the Old and New Testaments, published in a total of 14 volumes in the 1830s.
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August Weenaas
1835 - 1924 (89 years)
August Weenaas was a Norwegian American Lutheran minister and educator. August Weenaas was the founding President of Augsburg University. Biography August Weenaas was born in Norway and educated in the ministry at the University of Christiania. He was ordained as a minister in the Church of Norway. He served as a pastor there for several years at Loppen prior to immigrating to the United States in 1868. Weenaas resigned his pastorate in the beginning of February 1868. Weenaas became a professor in Paxton, Illinois at the Scandinavian Augustana Synod Seminary in Rock Island, Illinois. In 1869, August Weenaas was named president of Augsburg Seminary.
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William Park Armstrong
1874 - 1944 (70 years)
William Park Armstrong was a theologian and New Testament scholar who is best known for his work at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography William Park Armstrong was born in Selma, Alabama, the son of William Park and Alice Armstrong and studied at Princeton University, earning his bachelor's degree at the age of 20. He would later earn his M.A. from Princeton and a B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary before studying in Europe. He studied at the German Universities of Marburg, Berlin, and Erlangen, before finally finishing his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1900 he was ordained into the Presbyterian Church .
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Joseph Estlin Carpenter
1844 - 1927 (83 years)
Joseph Estlin Carpenter was an English Unitarian minister, the principal of Manchester College, Oxford. He was an expert in Sanskrit and a pioneer in the study of comparative religion. Biography Carpenter was born in Ripley, Surrey. He was the second son of William Benjamin Carpenter. His grandfather was Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter.
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Thomas Treadwell Stone
1801 - 1895 (94 years)
Thomas Treadwell Stone was an American Unitarian pastor, abolitionist, and Transcendentalist. Life and work Thomas Treadwell Stone was born on February 9, 1801, in Waterford, Maine to Solomon Stone and Hepzibah Treadwell Stone. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Treadwell, served with the Minutemen and was at the battle of Bunker Hill with Colonel William Prescott's regiment. At that time Waterford was an area of new and sparsely populated farmland, and Solomon Stone made his living as a farmer. Thomas attended Bridgton Academy and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1820.
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John Trevisa
1342 - 1402 (60 years)
John Trevisa was a Cornish writer and professional translator. Trevisa was born at Trevessa in the parish of St Enoder in mid-Cornwall, in Britain and was a native Cornish speaker. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, and became Vicar of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, chaplain to the 5th Lord Berkeley, and Canon of Westbury on Trym.
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John Bale
1495 - 1563 (68 years)
John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory in Ireland. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being dispersed. His unhappy disposition and habit of quarrelling earned him the nickname "bilious Bale".
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William Edwy Vine
1873 - 1949 (76 years)
William Edwy Vine , commonly known as W. E. Vine, was an English Biblical scholar, theologian, and writer, most famous for Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. Life Vine was born in the second quarter of 1873, in Blandford Forum, Dorset. His father ran the Mount Radford School, which moved to Exeter in 1875, and it was in this location that Vine was raised. He became a Christian at an early age and was baptised in the Plymouth Brethren assembly in Fore Street, Exeter. At 17, Vine became a teacher at his father's school, before moving to Aberystwyth to study at the University College of Wales.
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Sixtinus Amama
1593 - 1629 (36 years)
Sixtinus Amama was a Dutch Reformed theologian and orientalist. Amama was among the first to advocate a thorough knowledge of the original languages of the Bible as indispensable to theologians. Life He was born in Franeker, in the Dutch province of Friesland. He studied oriental languages from 1610 at the University of Franeker and then at the University of Oxford, attracted there by John Prideaux. In 1614 he took up also the study of Arabic at the University of Leyden where he made the acquaintance of Thomas Erpenius.
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Friedrich Loofs
1858 - 1928 (70 years)
Friedrich Loofs was a German theologian and church historian best remembered for his studies involving the history of dogma. Biography Loofs studied theology at the universities of Leipzig, Tübingen, and Göttingen, and received his doctorate from Leipzig in 1881. As a student, Adolf von Harnack and Albrecht Ritschl were important influences to his career. From 1888 to 1926 he was a professor of church history at the University of Halle, where in 1907/08 he served as rector. Concurrent with his work at the university, from 1890 to 1925, he held title of Consistorialrat in the city of Magdebu...
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Joseph Schnitzer
1859 - 1939 (80 years)
Joseph Schnitzer was a theologian. He started teaching at Munich University in 1902. Literary works Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Savonarolas, 6 vols., 1902–1914Savonarola, 2 vols., 1924 External links MTA at nyitottegyetem.phil-inst.hu
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Gottlieb Nathaniel Bonwetsch
1848 - 1925 (77 years)
Gottlieb Nathanael Bonwetsch was a Russian-born German Protestant theologian. He was born in Norka, Saratov province in Russia, where his father was pastor. He studied theology in Dorpat, then later in Göttingen and Bonn. In 1878 he published a treatise on the writings of Tertullian, titled Die Schriften Tertullians, nach der Zeit ihrer Abfassung untersucht. In 1881 obtained his doctorate in theology and his first academic position was at Dorpat . He became a full professor of church history at the University of Göttingen in 1891.
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Joseph Rickaby
1845 - 1932 (87 years)
Joseph John Rickaby, SJ was an English Jesuit priest and philosopher. Life Rickaby was born in 1845 in Everingham, York. He received his education at Stonyhurst College, and was ordained in 1877, one of the so-called Stonyhurst Philosophers, along with Richard F. Clarke, Herbert Lucas, and his own brother, John Rickaby. a significant group for neo-scholasticism in England. At the time he was at St Beuno's, he was on friendly terms with Gerard Manley Hopkins; they were ordained on the same day.
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Gotthard Victor Lechler
1811 - 1888 (77 years)
Gotthard Victor Lechler , German Lutheran theologian, was born at Kloster Reichenbach in Württemberg. Biography He studied at the University of Tübingen under Ferdinand Christian Baur, and later on, served as a deacon in the towns of Waiblingen and Knittlingen. In 1858 he became a pastor at the church of St Thomas and professor ordinarius of historical theology at the University of Leipzig.
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Anthony Tuckney
1599 - 1670 (71 years)
Anthony Tuckney was an English Puritan theologian and scholar. Life Anthony Tuckney was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a fellow there from 1619 to 1630. He was town preacher at Boston, Lincolnshire from 1629 and in 1633, succeeded John Cotton as vicar of St Botolph's Church, Boston.
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Georg Kükenthal
1864 - 1955 (91 years)
Georg Kükenthal was a German pastor and botanist who specialized in the field of caricology. He was the brother of zoologist Willy Kükenthal . From 1882 to 1885 he studied theology at the universities of Tübingen and Halle. He worked as a pastor in Grub am Forst, and later in Coburg. In 1913 he received an honorary degree from the University of Breslau.
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Thierry of Chartres
1100 - 1155 (55 years)
Thierry of Chartres or Theodoric the Breton was a twelfth-century philosopher working at Chartres and Paris, France. The cathedral school at Chartres promoted scholarship before the first university was founded in France. Thierry was a major figure in twelfth-century philosophy and learning, and, like many twelfth-century scholars, is notable for his embrace of Plato's Timaeus and his application of philosophy to theological issues. Some modern scholars believed Thierry to have been a brother of Bernard of Chartres who had founded the school of Chartres, but later research has shown that th...
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William Allen
1532 - 1594 (62 years)
William Allen , also known as Guilielmus Alanus or Gulielmus Alanus, was an English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was an ordained priest, but was never a bishop. His main role was setting up colleges to train English missionary priests with the mission of returning secretly to England to keep Roman Catholicism alive there. Allen assisted in the planning of the Spanish Armada's attempted invasion of England in 1588. It failed badly, but if it had succeeded he would probably have been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. The Douai-Rheims Bible, a complete translation into English from Latin, was printed under Allen's orders.
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Nathanael Emmons
1745 - 1840 (95 years)
Nathanael Emmons, sometimes spelled Nathaniel Emmons, was an American Congregational minister and influential theologian of the New Divinity school. He was born at East Haddam, Connecticut. Emmons graduated at Yale in 1767, studied theology under the Rev. John Smalley at Berlin, Connecticut, and was licensed to preach in 1769. After preaching four years in New York and New Hampshire, he became, in April 1773, pastor of the Second church at Franklin , of which he remained in charge until May 1827, when failing health compelled his relinquishment of active ministerial cares. He lived, however,...
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Anne Zernike
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
Anne Zernike was a Dutch, liberal theologian, who was the first ordained woman minister of the Netherlands. Though she began her career with the Mennonites, which was the only congregation that allowed female ministers at the time, the majority of her career was spent in the Dutch Protestant Association .
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William Milligan
1821 - 1893 (72 years)
William Milligan was a renowned Scottish theologian. He studied at the University of Halle in Germany, and eventually became a professor at the University of Aberdeen. He is best known for his commentary on the Revelation of St. John. He also wrote two other well-known books that are classics: The Resurrection of our Lord and The Ascension of our Lord.
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Walter Jekyll
1849 - 1929 (80 years)
Walter Jekyll , was an English clergyman who renounced his religion and became a planter in Jamaica, where he collected and published songs and stories from the local African-Caribbean community. Early life Jekyll lived in his youth with his family at 2 Grafton Street, Mayfair, London, the seventh of the seven children of Captain Edward Joseph Hill Jekyll, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, and his wife Julia Hammersley. His sister was the gardener Gertrude Jekyll. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. Jekyll was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who borrowed the family ...
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Filippo Bernardini
1884 - 1954 (70 years)
Filippo Bernardini was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He spent almost his entire career in the diplomatic service of the Holy See and was given the rank of archbishop in 1933. He was Apostolic Delegate to Australia for two years before taking up the position of Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland where he served from 1935 to 1953. During World War II, he was active in the Catholic resistance to Nazism and provided assistance to Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. He served briefly as Secretary of the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith just before his death. Before entering the dipl...
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Joachim Beckmann
1901 - 1987 (86 years)
Joachim Beckmann was a German evangelical theologian. He served between 1958 and 1971 as "Präses" of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. Life Joachim Wilhelm Beckmann was born into a conservative traditionalist family in Eickel, a small town in the heart of the rapidly industrialising Ruhr conurbation, within which Eickel is positioned between Essen and Dortmund. His father, Julius August Wilhelm Beckmann, was a protestant pastor. Sources are largely silent about his childhood, but in 1920, when he passed his Abitur he was a pupil at the Gymnasium at nearby Wattenscheid. Earl...
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Walter of Châtillon
1135 - 1201 (66 years)
Walter of Châtillon was a 12th-century French writer and theologian who wrote in the Latin language. He studied under Stephen of Beauvais and at the University of Paris. It was probably during his student years that he wrote a number of Latin poems in the Goliardic manner that found their way into the Carmina Burana collection. During his lifetime, however, he was more esteemed for a long Latin epic on the life of Alexander the Great, the Alexandreis, sive Gesta Alexandri Magni, a hexameter epic, full of anachronisms; he depicts the Crucifixion of Jesus as having already taken place during the days of Alexander the Great.
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Bruno Doehring
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Bruno Doehring was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. A preacher at the Berlin Cathedral from 1914 to 1960, Doehring was a popular figure in the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in Berlin. He was a strict conservative and was active in the Weimar Republic as a politician.
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John of Jandun
1285 - 1328 (43 years)
John of Jandun or John of Jaudun was a French philosopher, theologian, and political writer. Jandun is best known for his outspoken defense of Aristotelianism and his influence in the early Latin Averroist movement.
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Joseph Seiss
1823 - 1904 (81 years)
Joseph Augustus Seiss was an American theologian and Lutheran minister. He was known for his religious writings on pyramidology and dispensationalism. Life Seiss was born in Graceham, Frederick County, Maryland, to an agricultural family; his interest in religious studies reportedly began in childhood. Seiss was confirmed at age 15 as a member of the Moravian Church, and determined to pursue the ministry. Beginning in 1839, Seiss enrolled at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania for a year or two of studies, but completed his theological courses by private study. He was licensed to preach in 1842 by the synod of Virginia, and ordained to a Lutheran ministry in 1844.
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Jovan Rajić
1726 - 1801 (75 years)
Jovan Rajić was a Serbian writer, historian, theologian, and pedagogue, considered one of the greatest Serbian academics of the 18th century. He was one of the most notable representatives of Serbian Baroque literature along with Zaharije Orfelin, Pavle Julinac, Vasilije III Petrović-Njegoš, Simeon Končarević, Simeon Piščević, and others .
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Antonio Escobar y Mendoza
1589 - 1669 (80 years)
Antonio Escobar y Mendoza was the leading ethicist of his time. Biography Born at Valladolid in Castile, he was educated by Jesuits before entering this order, aged fifteen. He soon became a famous preacher, and his facility was so great that for fifty years he preached daily, and sometimes twice a day. Above all he was a prodigious writer: his collected works comprise eighty-three volumes. Escobar's first literary efforts were Latin verses in praise of Ignatius Loyola and Mary , but his principal works focus on exegesis and moral theology. Of the latter the best-known are Summula casuum conscientiae , Liber theologiae moralis and Universae theologiae moralis problemata .
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Paul Fagius
1504 - 1549 (45 years)
Paul Fagius was a Renaissance scholar of Biblical Hebrew and Protestant reformer. Life Fagius was born at Rheinzabern in 1504. His father was a teacher and council clerk. In 1515 he went to study at the University of Heidelberg and in 1518 was present at the Heidelberg Disputation. In 1522 he moved to the University of Strasbourg, where he learned Hebrew and met Matthäus Zell, Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito.
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Rodrigo de Arriaga
1592 - 1667 (75 years)
Rodrigo de Arriaga was a Spanish philosopher, theologian and Jesuit. He is known as one of the foremost Spanish Jesuits of his day and as a leading representative of post-Suárezian baroque Jesuit nominalism. Accordig to Richard Popkin, Arriaga was “the last of the great Spanish Scholastics”.
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Denis Bérardier
1735 - 1794 (59 years)
Denis Bérardier was a French priest and theologian. He was born at Quimper, in Brittany 26 March 1735 and died at Paris 1 May 1794. He was one of the deputies from the Paris clergy to the Estates-General of 1789.
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Thomas Sanchez
1550 - 1610 (60 years)
Tomás Sánchez was a 16th-century Spanish Jesuit and famous casuist. Life In 1567 he entered the Society of Jesus. He was at first refused admittance on account of an impediment in his speech; however, after imploring delivery from this impediment before a picture of Mary at Córdoba, Spain, his application was granted. For a time he was the Master of Novices at Granada. The remainder of his life was devoted to the composition of his works. He died of pneumonia.
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Jakob Christoph Rudolf Eckermann
1754 - 1837 (83 years)
Jakob Christoph Rudolf Eckermann was a German academic theologian and author who served for 55 years at Kiel University. Background Eckermann was born on 6 September 1754 at Wedendorf, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1782 he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Kiel, and Danish Church councillor. He died on 6 May 1836. He is the author of Erklarung aller dunklen Stellen des N.T. : Joel metrisch ubersetzt mit einer neuen Erklarung : Compend. theol. theor. bibl. histor. ; a German edition of the same work, Handb. fur das systemat. Studium der Glaubenslehre, in which he declares ...
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Gustav Frank
1832 - 1904 (72 years)
Gustav Wilhelm Frank was a German-Austrian Protestant theologian, known as the author of a multi-volume work on the history of Protestant theology. He studied theology at the University of Jena, where his influences included Karl von Hase. In 1859 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1864 became an associate professor at Jena. In 1867 he was appointed a full professor of systematic theology at the University of Vienna. In 1867 he also became a member of the Austrian Protestant Church Council.
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