The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Theology,
#4101
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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Juan Andrés
1740 - 1817 (77 years)
Juan Andrés y Morell was a Spanish Jesuit priest, Christian humanist and literary critic of the Age of Enlightenment. He was the creator of world history and comparative literature through the most important and extensive of his works: Dell'Origine, progressi e stato d'ogni attuale letteratura – Origen, progresos y estado actual de toda la literatura only recently restored to a critical and complete edition. He is one of the most important authors, together with Lorenzo Hervás, Antonio Eximeno, Francisco Javier Clavijero or Celestino Mutis, of the Spanish Universalist School of the 18th ce...
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James Bowling Mozley
1813 - 1878 (65 years)
James Bowling Mozley was an English theologian. He was born at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, the younger brother of Thomas Mozley, and was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School and later Oriel College, Oxford.
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Vincent Contenson
1641 - 1674 (33 years)
Vincent Contenson was a French Dominican theologian and preacher. His epitaph in the church of that place described him as "in years a youth, mature in wisdom and in virtue venerable". Despite his short life, he gave proof in his writings of considerable learning and won remarkable popularity by his pulpit utterances.
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Pietro Alagona
1549 - 1624 (75 years)
Pietro Alagona was a Catholic theologian. Alagona was born in Syracuse. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1564, taught philosophy and theology, and was Rector of Trapani. He died in Rome. His first works were published under the family name of his mother, Givarra. Later on he used his own name, Alagona, and is best known for his Compendium of the works of Martin Aspilcueta, who was a doctor of theology in Navarre. This Martin Aspilcueta was the uncle of St. Francis Xavier. The Enchiridion, seu Manuale Confessariorum, which was compiled by Alagona, went through at least twenty-three editions....
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Giles of Lessines
1230 - 1304 (74 years)
Giles of Lessines OP was a thirteenth-century Dominican scholastic philosopher, a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. He was also strongly influenced by Albertus Magnus. He was an early defender of Thomism. He is also known as an early scientist, and for economic theory, writing on usury and market prices.
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Jean Vendeville
1527 - 1592 (65 years)
Jean Vendeville was a law professor and a bishop of Tournai. Life Vendeville was possibly born in Lille, the son of Guillaume Vendeville and Marie Des Barbieux. He went to school in Menin, and from the age of fifteen in Paris, where he studied law, beginning a legal practice in Arras. In 1551 he married Anne Roelofs, of Leuven, and in 1553 he obtained a doctorate in laws from the University of Leuven. In 1562 he was appointed professor of law at the newly founded University of Douai. He was influential in rallying secular support for the first establishment of diocesan seminaries in the Low Countries, and for the establishment of a Jesuit college at Douai.
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Edward Génicot
1856 - 1900 (44 years)
Edward Génicot, born at Antwerp , 18 June 1856, and died at Leuven , 21 February 1900, was a Belgian Jesuit priest and moral theologian. Life After a course of studies at the Jesuit college in Antwerp, he entered the Society of Jesus on 27 September 1872. He was successively professor of humanities and of rhetoric at the Jesuit school of Ghent and at Antwerp. After being ordained priest and sustaining a public defense in all theology, taught first canon law and then moral theology at the Jesuit theological faculty of Louvain, from 1889 until his death.
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Jacob Ziegler
1470 - 1549 (79 years)
The humanist and theologian Jacob Ziegler of Landau in Bavaria, was an itinerant scholar of geography and cartographer, who lived a wandering life in Europe. He studied at the University of Ingolstadt, then spent some time at the court of Pope Leo X before he converted to Protestantism; subsequently his geographical works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
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Jean-Antoine d'Aubermont
1612 - 1686 (74 years)
Joannes Antonius d'Aubermont was a Dominican theologian of 's-Hertogenbosch. He joined the Dominicans in 1632 in Ghent, taught philosophy and theology in several convents of his order, was made doctor of theology at Leuven in 1652, and president of the local Dominican college in 1653.
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John of Ragusa
1390 - 1443 (53 years)
John of Ragusa was a Croatian Dominican theologian. He died at Lausanne, Switzerland in 1443. He was president of the Council of Basle, and a legate to Constantinople. He was created cardinal by Antipope Felix V, so would be considered by many a "pseudocardinal".
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John Shaw
1863 - 1934 (71 years)
John William Shaw was an American clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of San Antonio and Archbishop of New Orleans . Biography One of six children, Shaw was born in Mobile, Alabama to Patrick and Elizabeth Shaw. He was a pupil at the parochial school of St Vincent de Paul Church and the academy of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in his native city. He later was sent, with one of his brothers, to St Finian's Seminary at Navan, County Meath, Ireland. He studied at the Urban College of Propaganda and Pontifical North American College in Rome in 1882–1888.
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Louis-Adolphe Paquet
1859 - 1942 (83 years)
Louis-Adolphe Paquet was an influential French-Canadian theologian from the late 19th early 20th century, and a major North American proponent and actor in the rebirth of Neo-Scholasticism. Although nowhere as politically influential as his uncle Benjamin Pâquet had been, he was well respected and his opinion helped shape the doctrines and policies of the Canadian church in the early 20th century.
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Louis Ruffet
1836 - 1923 (87 years)
Louis Ruffet was a Swiss Protestant theologian and church historian. In 1859 he received his bachelor's degree in theology at the École de theologie in Geneva and became ordained as a minister at the Église de l'Oratoire. He served as a minister in the French communities of Royan, Le Creusot and Aix-les-Bains, and in 1861 returned to Geneva as a minister at the Église de l'Oratoire, where he preached until 1869. In 1870–72 he worked as a director of a seminary in Lausanne, and afterwards, taught classes in church history at the École de théologie in Geneva. In 1874 he was awarded an honorary ...
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Ernst von Dobschütz
1870 - 1934 (64 years)
Ernst Adolf Alfred Oskar Adalbert von Dobschütz was a German theologian, textual critic, author of numerous books and professor at the University of Halle, the University of Breslau, and the University of Strasbourg. He also lectured in the United States and Sweden.
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Irénée Hausherr
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
Irénée Hausherr was a Jesuit of Alsatian origin and specialist in Greek patristic and monastic spirituality. Ordained priest in 1923 after studies in the Netherlands, he became a professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, where he is claimed to have pioneered the study of the spirituality of the Christian East at an academic level. In this he was seconded by the future Cardinal Tomas Spidlik. Several of his works take their title from key terms of Desert spirituality, e.g., penthos; and philautia . He published mainly for the Pontifical Oriental Institute, also in Analecta Bollandiana, and Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo.
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Margaret Benn, Viscountess Stansgate
1897 - 1991 (94 years)
Margaret Eadie Benn, Viscountess Stansgate was a British theologian, the President of the Congregational Federation, and an advocate of women's rights. Life Margaret Holmes was the daughter of Scottish politician Daniel Holmes. In her youth, in the 1920s, she was a member of the League of the Church Militant which was the predecessor of the Movement for the Ordination of Women and was rebuked by Randall Thomas Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for advocating the ordination of women.
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Nicholas Congiato
1816 - 1897 (81 years)
The Reverend Nicholas Congiato, S.J. was born in Cagliari, Sardinia and entered the Society of Jesus, an order of the Roman Catholic Church, when he was fourteen years of age. After his initial education, he went to Turin, Italy, for advanced studies in philosophy. Fr. Congiato then became Vice-President of the College of Nobles in Turin and held a similar position at the Jesuit College in Fribourg, a city in Switzerland.
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Alexander Fletcher
1787 - 1860 (73 years)
Alexander Fletcher , the Children's Friend, was a Scottish kirk minister, and later an Independent divine in England. Author of numerous devotional works, and founder of the Finsbury Chapel in London, he was widely acknowledged as the pioneer of preaching to audiences of children and attracting large crowds of young people to nonconformist chapels through specially designed events and services as well as through Sunday schools.
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John Green
1706 - 1779 (73 years)
John Green was an English clergyman and academic. Life Green was born at Beverley in Yorkshire in 1706. Having been schooled in his home town, he was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge in 1724. Green graduated B.A. in 1728 and was awarded a fellowship in 1730. He was ordained in 1731 and became vicar of Hinxton, Cambridgeshire. He was eventually made domestic chaplain to the Duke of Somerset, who was chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 1748, the Duke died and was succeeded by the Duke of Newcastle who quickly saw to it that Green was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity, t...
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Laurenz Forer
1580 - 1659 (79 years)
Laurenz Forer was a Swiss Jesuit theologian and controversialist. Life He was born at Lucerne, entered the Society of Jesus at the age of twenty, in Landshut, and made part of his studies under Paul Laymann and Adam Tanner. He taught philosophy at Ingolstadt , and theology, moral and controversial, for six years at Dillingen. In the latter institution he held also the office of chancellor for several years.
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Alexander Knox
1757 - 1831 (74 years)
Alexander Knox was an Irish lay theological writer. He has been described as "an exemplar of the often-neglected High Church tradition within the Church of Ireland" and as "one of the most formative figures in the development of Anglicanism as a distinctive form of church life".
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Robert Owen
1820 - 1902 (82 years)
Robert Owen was a Welsh theologian and antiquarian. Life Owen was born in Dolgellau, Merionethshire, on 13 May 1820. After being educated at Ruthin School, Owen attended Jesus College, Oxford, matriculating in 1838. He obtained a third-class Bachelor of Arts degree in Literae Humaniores in 1842, with further degrees of Master of Arts and Bachelor of Divinity . He was a Fellow of Jesus College from 1845 until 1864, when an allegation of immorality forced his resignation.
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