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List of the most influential people in Theology,

#4301

Giovanni Bellarini

1552 - 1630 (78 years)

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

#4302

John Moore

1646 - 1714 (68 years)

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

#4303

Kaspar Eberhard

Kaspar Eberhard

1523 - 1575 (52 years)

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

#4304

Konrad Hubert

1507 - 1577 (70 years)

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

#4305

Hieronim Malecki

1527 - 1583 (56 years)

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

#4306

James Wilson

1836 - 1931 (95 years)

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

#4307

Lucas Maius

1522 - 1598 (76 years)

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

#4308

Nikolaus von Laun

1300 - 1371 (71 years)

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

#4309

John Sullivan

1861 - 1933 (72 years)

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

#4310

Robert Parker

1564 - 1614 (50 years)

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

#4311

John Davies

1567 - 1644 (77 years)

John Davies, Mallwyd was one of Wales's leading scholars of the late Renaissance. He wrote a Welsh grammar and dictionary. He was also a translator and editor and an ordained minister of the Church of England.

#4312

Georg Schreiber

1882 - 1963 (81 years)

Georg Schreiber was a German politician and church historian. He spent fifteen years as a student which, even by the standards of Wilhelmine Germany,was exceptional. Following ordination he increasingly combined his student career with chaplaincy work. He nevertheless ended up with an unusually broad university-level education. He held a full "ordinary" professorship at the University of Münster between 1917 and 1935, and again between 1945 and 1951, also serving as University Rector during 1945/46. He served as a Member of Parliament, representing electoral district 19 – later 17 – between...

#4313

Janko Šimrak

1883 - 1945 (62 years)

Janko Šimrak was a Croatian Greek Catholic hierarch. He was Apostolic Administrator from 1941 to 1942 and bishop from 1942 to 1946 of the Eastern Catholic Eparchy of Križevci. Life Born in Šimraki, near Samobor, Austria-Hungary in 1883, he was ordained a priest on 23 August 1908 for the Eparchy of Križevci. Fr. Šimrak was the spiritual director and then prefect of the Greek Catholic Seminary in Zagreb from 1908 to 1935.

#4314

Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg

Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg

1445 - 1510 (65 years)

Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg was a priest, considered one of the greatest of the popular preachers of the 15th century. He was closely connected with the Renaissance humanists of Strasbourg, whose leader was the well-known Jakob Wimpfeling , called "the educator of Germany". Like Wimpfeling, Geiler was a secular priest; both fought the ecclesiastical abuses of the age, but not in the spirit of Martin Luther and his adherents. They looked, instead, for salvation and preservation only in the restoration of Christian morals in Church and State through the faithful maintenance of the doctrines of the Church.

#4315

Thomas Tullideph

1700 - 1777 (77 years)

Thomas Tullideph was principal of St Leonards College at the University of St Andrews and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1742. The odd surname is said to mean “hill of the oxen” and first appears as John de Tolidef in Aberdeen in the early 14th century.

#4316

William Josiah Irons

1812 - 1883 (71 years)

William Josiah Irons was a priest in the Church of England and a theological writer. Life Irons, born at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, 12 September 1812, was second son of the Rev. Joseph Irons , by his first wife, Mary Ann, daughter of William Broderick. His mother died in 1828. His father, a popular evangelical preacher, born at Ware, Hertfordshire, on 5 November 1785, commenced preaching in March 1808 under the auspices of the London Itinerant Society, was ordained an independent minister on 21 May 1814, was stationed at Hoddesdon from 1812 to 1815, and at Sawston, near Cambridge, from 1815 to...

#4317

Giovanni di Casali

$Giovanni di Casali$

1320 - 1375 (55 years)

Giovanni di Casali was a friar in the Franciscan Order, a natural philosopher and a theologian, author of works on theology and science, and a papal legate. He was born in Casale Monferrato around 1320 and entered the Franciscan order in the Genoese province. He was lecturer in the Franciscan stadium at Assisi from 1335 to 1340. He subsequently was lector at Cambridge ca. 1340 to 1341, where he encountered the mathematical physics developed by the Oxford Calculators. He was also an inquisitor in Florence, and a lector in Bologna from 1346 to ca. 1352. In 1375 Pope Gregory XI appointed him ...

#4318

Nur al-Din al-Sabuni

Nur al-Din al-Sabuni also written as Nuraddin as-Sabuni , was a 12th century theologian within the Maturidite school of Sunni Islam, and author of Al-Bidayah min al-Kifayah fi al-Hidayah fi Usul al-Din , a summary of Islamic creed of his more comprehensive work al-Kifayah.

#4319

Candidus

701 - 805 (104 years)

Candidus was the name given to the Anglo-Saxon Wizo or Witto by Alcuin, whose scholar he was and with whom he went in 782 to Gaul. He is author of several philosophical texts wrongly attributed by earlier scholars to the benedictinian monk Brun Candidus of Fulda, the author of the vita of Abott Eigil of Fulda. But recent research into the manuscript tradition furnishing clear evidence attested the authorship of Candidus Wizo, the learned disciple of Alcuin. Based on his deep knowledge of the works of Saint Augustine of Hippo he tried to give proof of god's existence, to demonstrate that the in...

#4320

Thomas Cooper

1517 - 1594 (77 years)

Thomas Cooper was an English bishop, lexicographer, theologian, and writer. Life Cooper was born in Oxford, England, where he was educated at Magdalen College. He became Master of Magdalen College School and afterwards practised as a physician in Oxford.

#4321

David Derodon

1600 - 1664 (64 years)

David de Rodon or plain Derodon , was a French Calvinist theologian and philosopher. Derodon was born at Die, in the Dauphiné. He had the reputation of being one of the most eminent logicians of his time. His knowledge of philosophy was both extensive and profound. He taught philosophy at Orange, at Nismes, and at Geneva. He inclined to the doctrines of Gassendi rather than to those of the Cartesian philosophy. He had frequent discussions with the followers of Descartes. He kept up a close correspondence with many learned men of his time, particularly with Galileo and Descartes.

#4322

Alfred Vaucher

1887 - 1993 (106 years)

Alfred-Felix Vaucher was an Italian theologian, church historian, and bibliographer. He was a pioneer in the history and study of Seventh-day Adventism. Preaching his first sermon at age 14, Vaucher studied at a church in Paris. In 1903, he was engaged by the Adventist church, to which he devoted an active ministry of approximately eighty years.

#4323

Jacques-Charles de Brisacier

1641 - 1736 (95 years)

Jacques-Charles de Brisacier was a French orator and ecclesiastical writer. Life Brisacier was born in Bourges. At the age of 25, he entered the Paris Foreign Missions Society and devoted 70 years of his life to this work. The scion of a rich and prominent family, son of the collector-general for the province of Berry, chaplain in ordinary to Queen Maria Theresa of Spain, wife of Louis XIV.

#4324

John Adams

1543 - 1586 (43 years)

John Adams was an English Catholic priest and martyr. Life He was born at Winterborne St Martin in Dorset at an unknown date and became a Protestant minister. He later entered the Catholic Church and travelled to the English College then at Rheims, arriving on 7 December 1579. He was ordained a priest at Soissons on 17 December 1580. He set out for the mission in England on 29 March 1581, but returned to Rheims and again set out for England on 18 June 1583.

#4325

J. Stuart Russell

J. Stuart Russell

1816 - 1895 (79 years)

James Stuart Russell M.A., D.Div., was a Christian pastor and author of The Parousia. The book was originally published in 1878 under title The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord's Second Coming with a second edition published in 1887.

#4326

Rudesind Barlow

1585 - 1656 (71 years)

Dom Rudesind Barlow OSB was an English Benedictine monk, a recusant academic, and Rector of the English College in Douai. Life He was born William Barlow in 1585, the third son of Sir Alexander Barlow of Barlow Hall, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near Manchester and his wife, Mary Brereton. As an adult, William Barlow went to France to be educated with his younger brother Edward at the English College in Douai.

#4327

James Martin

1550 - 1584 (34 years)

James Martin was a Scottish philosophical writer and early Ramist. Life He was a native of Dunkeld, Perthshire, and is said to have been educated at the University of Oxford. A James Martin, whose college is not mentioned, commenced M.A. at Oxford on 31 March 1522.

#4328

Tehilla Lichtenstein

1893 - 1973 (80 years)

Tehilla Lichtenstein was a cofounder and leader of Jewish Science, as well as an author. She was born in Jerusalem and immigrated to America when she was eleven years old. Her parents were Hava and Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn. She earned a B.A. degree in Classics from Hunter College and an M.A. degree in literature from Columbia University.

#4329

William Kay

1820 - 1886 (66 years)

William Kay was an English cleric and academic, known as a college head and biblical scholar. Life The youngest of nine children of Thomas and Ann Kay of Knaresborough, he was born on the 8th of April 1820, at Pickering, North Yorkshire. He passed two years at Giggleswick school, and, together with James Fraser, gained an open scholarship at Lincoln College, Oxford, March 15, 1836. He graduated in 1839 with a first class in classics and a second in mathematics. He was elected as a fellow of his college 22 October 1840, and in 1842 and was appointed one of the tutors, proceeded M.A., and was e...

#4330

Joseph Hussey

1660 - 1726 (66 years)

Joseph Hussey was an English Calvinist and congregationalist minister. Life Hussey was born in Fordingbridge, Hampshire. After studying with the ejected minister Robert Whitaker, he attended Charles Morton's dissenting academy at Newington Green. He attributed a 1686 conversion to the reading of Stephen Charnock's The Existence and Attributes of God.

#4331

Duncan Mearns

1779 - 1852 (73 years)

Duncan Mearns was a Scottish minister who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1821. He was professor of divinity at Aberdeen University from 1816. Life He was born in the manse at Cluny in Aberdeenshire on 23 August 1779 the son of Rev Alexander Mearns, and his wife, Anne Morison, daughter of James Morison of Disblair, who had served as Provost of Aberdeen in 1745. Duncan entered King's College, Aberdeen with a bursary in 1791 to study divinity under Rev Prof Gilbert Gerard and Rev Prof George Campbell. He graduated MA in March 1795, aged 15.

#4332

Luigi Novarini

1594 - 1656 (62 years)

Luigi Novarini was an Italian theologian and scholar. Biography Luigi Novarini was born at Verona in 1594. He received at baptism the name of Girolamo, which he changed to that of Luigi when he took, in 1612, the garb of the Theatines. After having studied theology and entered the priesthood at Venice, he returned to his native city, where he occupied different positions in his order. He was well skilled in the Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac languages, and enjoyed the esteem of the princes and learned men of his time. He died at Verona in 1650. Of his value as a writer, Nicéron says: "His natural ...

#4333

Alexander Martin

1857 - 1946 (89 years)

Alexander Martin was a Scottish minister, successively of the Free Church of Scotland , the United Free Church of Scotland and the Church of Scotland. He was Principal of New College, Edinburgh 1918-1935 and one of the architects of the union of the United Free Church of Scotland and the Church of Scotland in 1929.

#4334

Thomas Hamilton

1842 - 1926 (84 years)

Thomas Hamilton PC was a Northern Ireland clergyman and academician who served as president of Queen's College, Belfast and subsequently Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast after its creation in 1908.

#4335

George Benson

1699 - 1762 (63 years)

George Benson was an English Presbyterian pastor and theologian who was noted for his publications on the Christian epistles. Benson often conversed with dignitaries such as Lord Chancellor Peter King and Edmund Law, the bishop of Carlisle. According to Alexander Balloch Grosart, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, Benson's views were "Socinian" though at this period the term is often confused with Arian.

#4336

Antonio de Ferraris

Antonio de Ferraris

1444 - 1517 (73 years)

Antonio de Ferraris , also known by his epithet Galateo , was an Italian scholar, academic, doctor and humanist, of Greek descent. Life Antonius De Ferraris was born in 1444 in Galatone, located in Salento, in the province of Lecce to a family of Greek descent. Both his great-grandfather and grandfather were priests in the Eastern Orthodox Church and were fluent in both Greek and Latin literature. His father was also fluent in both Greek and Latin. His family was part of the historical Greek community of Southern Italy. He later wrote of his pride to be descended from Greek ancestors and prie...

#4337

John Whitehead

1301 - 1401 (100 years)

John Whitehead was an Irish theologian. A native of Ireland, Whitehead studied at Oxford where in 1408 he is referred to as a Doctor of Theology. Up to 1415 he was rector of Stabannan, County Louth. Like Henry Crumpe and Richard FitzRalph he was involved in sermonical attacks upon the Franciscan friars. He attended the 1409 Council of Pisa as proctor of the Archbishop Fleming of Armagh.

#4338

James Wedderburn

1495 - 1553 (58 years)

James Wedderburn was a Scottish poet, the eldest son of James Wedderburn, merchant of Dundee , and of Janet Barry, sister of John Barry, vicar of Dundee. He was born in Dundee about 1495, and matriculated at St Andrews University in 1514.

#4339

John Bate

John Bate was an English or Welsh theologian and philosopher. Life Bate was, according to Leland's account, born west of the River Severn , but seems to have been brought up in the Carmelite monastery at York, where his progress in learning was so great that he was dispatched to complete his studies at Oxford. Philosophy and theology seem to have divided his attention, and on asking his master's degree in both these subjects he proceeded to add to his reputation by authorship. He was acknowledged to be an authority in his own university and the news of his acquirements soon spread abroad. His...

#4340

George of Slavonia

1360 - 1416 (56 years)

George of Slavonia was a medieval theological writer and professor at the University of Sorbonne in Paris. He was also a priest in the city of Tours. He is notable for his writings on Glagolitic alphabet and the Croatian lands.

#4341

András Eőssi

1520 - 1600 (80 years)

András Eőssi of Szenterzsébet , in Harghita, was a Székely nobleman in Transylvania who founded the Szekler Sabbatarians sect. Eőssi came into contact with Matthias Vehe and, after the death of Ferenc Dávid in 1579, set up the Sabbatarian branch of the Transylvanian Unitarians. He was an autodidact, with followers including Simon Péchi and the Unitarian Miklós Bogáthi Fazekas. The first major study on this group was published in Hungarian in 1899 by Samuel Kohn.

#4342

Johann Heinrich Acker

1647 - 1719 (72 years)

Johann Heinrich Acker was a German writer. He sometimes wrote under the name of Melissander. He was taught in his native city of Naumburg and at the regional school of Pforta . Beginning in 1669, he studied in Jena where he became magister and adjunct of the philosophical faculty. In 1673 he became adjunct and pastor in near Gotha, and in 1689 he became superintendent and court chaplain in Blankenhain. He resigned in 1717 due to an illness and moved to Gotha, where he died in 1719.

#4343

David Hillhouse Buel

David Hillhouse Buel

1862 - 1923 (61 years)

David Hillhouse Buel Jr. was an American priest who served as the president of Georgetown University. A Catholic priest and Jesuit for much of his life, he later left the Jesuit order to marry, and subsequently left the Catholic Church to become an Episcopal priest. Born at Watervliet, New York, he was the son of David Hillhouse Buel, a distinguished Union Army officer, and descended from numerous prominent New England families. While studying at Yale University, he formed an acquaintance with priest Michael J. McGivney, resulting in his conversion to Catholicism and joining the Society of Je...

#4344

Jean Benedicti

Jean Benedicti was a French Franciscan theologian of the sixteenth century. He belonged to the Observantine Province of Tours and Poitiers. He became in time secretary of the order and in this capacity accompanied the minister-general, Christopher a Capite Fontium, throughout the whole of Europe in the latter's canonical visitation of Franciscan houses.

#4345

Xantes Mariales

1580 - 1660 (80 years)

Xantes Mariales was an Italian Dominican theologian. Life He was of a noble Venetian family. At an early age he entered the Dominican convent of Sts. John and Paul. Remarkable for his versatility and prodigious memory, he was sent to Spain, where he completed his studies.

#4346

T. Lawrason Riggs

1888 - 1943 (55 years)

Thomas Lawrason Riggs was an American Catholic priest and musical theatre lyricist. Riggs was the first Catholic chaplain of Yale University. Early life The grandson of banker George Washington Riggs, Riggs was from a wealthy upper class Episcopalian family. In his youth Riggs was an acquaintance of the artist L. Bancel LaFarge, and came to know Thornton Wilder, Monty Woolley and other notable creative people while at Yale. Riggs was the president of the Yale Dramatic Society and a member of the Scroll and Key collegiate society. Riggs was a member of the Yale University Pundits, a senior society and literary group.

#4347

Nilus of Sora

1433 - 1508 (75 years)

Nil Sorsky became a leader of a tendency in the late medieval Russian Orthodox Church known as the non-possessors which opposed ecclesiastic landownership. The Russian Orthodox Church venerates Nil Sorsky as a saint, marking his feast day on the anniversary of his repose on 7 May.

#4348

John O'Grady

1886 - 1966 (80 years)

John O'Grady was a sociologist, economist, social reformer. O’Grady served as executive secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Charities from 1920 to 1961. Life John O'Grady, the son of Francis O'Grady and Margaret O'Grady, was born on March 31, 1886, in Annagh Feakle, County Clare, Ireland. He was educated in Ireland and attended seminary at the All Hallows College in Dublin, where he was ordained on June 24, 1909. After ordination, O'Grady was assigned to serve in the diocese of Omaha, Nebraska.

#4349

Francis Garden

1810 - 1884 (74 years)

Francis Garden was a Scottish theologian and religious author. When in England he generally served in the Anglican church, but in Scotland he served in the Episcopalian church. Early life He was born on 10 December 1810, the son of Alexander Garden , a Glasgow merchant, and Rebecca, daughter of Robert Menteith, esq., of Carstairs. They stayed at 110 Argyll Street. After home-tutoring he attended Glasgow University from whence he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.A. in 1833 and M.A. in 1836. In 1833 he obtained the Hulsean prize for an essay on the ‘Advantag...

#4350

Abner Kneeland

1774 - 1844 (70 years)

Abner Kneeland was an American evangelist and theologian who advocated views on women's rights, racial equality, and religious skepticism that were radical for his day. As a young man, Kneeland was a lay preacher in a Baptist church, but he converted to Universalism and was ordained as a minister. Later in life, he rejected revealed religion and Universalism's Christian God. Due to provocative statements he published, Massachusetts convicted Kneeland under its rarely used blasphemy law. Kneeland was the last man in the United States jailed for blasphemy. After his sentence, he founded a uto...

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