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,
#4551
Jean Langevin
1821 - 1892 (71 years)
Jean-Pierre-François-Laforce Langevin was born and lived his life in Quebec. He was taught by a governess before entering the Petit Séminaire de Quebec. He began his studies for the priesthood at the Grand Séminaire and taught back at his old school, a vocation he continued after he was ordained priest. His teaching and parish experience covered a number of years and were rewarding and successful. His final position in education was principal of the École Normale Laval.
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Johannes Hoornbeek
1617 - 1666 (49 years)
Johannes Hoornbeek , was a Dutch Reformed theologian. He was a student and a follower of Gisbertus Voetius, writing with him on spiritual desertion. Like his teacher Voetieus, he was also later a professor of theology at the University of Leiden and University of Utrecht. The two universities were closely related in the 17th century, and both the teacher and his students participated in the intellectual "Utrech Circle." Another member of the circle was Hornbeek's student colleague Andreas Essenius. The circle was also known as De Voetiaanse Kring , and it was one of the most influential intell...
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Abu Raita al-Takriti
775 - 835 (60 years)
Abu Raita al-Takriti , was a 9th-century Syriac Orthodox theologian and apologist. Biography Little is known about Abu Raita's life, and although some sources portray him as a bishop of Tikrit there is no contemporary evidence to support this. Abu Raita referred to himself as a "teacher" . It appears that his reputation as a theologian made him so well known that he was recalled to defend his fellow non-Chalcedonian co-religionists in Armenia.
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Cecil John Cadoux
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Cecil John Cadoux was a British Christian theologian and writer. Career He was born in Smyrna , the third son of William H. Cadoux and Emma Temple Cadoux. He was a student at Mansfield College, Oxford, where he was appointed Isherwood Fellow and Lecturer in Hebrew. He moved to the Yorkshire United Independent College at Shipley, in 1919, as professor of New Testament Criticism, Exegesis and Theology and of Christian Sociology. In 1933 he returned to Oxford as Mackennal professor of Church History and vice-principal of Mansfield College.
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Heinrich Bergner
1865 - 1918 (53 years)
Heinrich Bergner was a German art historian and Protestant pastor. Life He studied theology in Jena, Tübingen and Berlin and graduated from Jena in 1890. He was a pastor in Pfarrktzlar from 1891, Nischwitz from 1901 and Heilingen in Saxony-Anhalt from 1914. He was a major contributor and editor for the Historische Kommission für die Provinz Sachsen und Anhalt's series Beschreibenden Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler - as part of it he published Kreis Ziegenrück und Schleusingen , Kreis Grafschaft Wernigerode , Kreis Wanzleben , Kreis Wolmirstedt , Kreis Liebenwerda , Kreis Querf...
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Andrés Pacheco
1550 - 1626 (76 years)
Andrés Pacheco was a Spanish churchman and theologian. Biography Andrés Pacheco was born in La Puebla de Montalbán on April 5, 1550. His father was Alonso Pacheco y Téllez-Girón, Lord of La Puebla de Montalbánm, who was a Knight of the Order of Santiago and commander of Medina de las Torres. His mother was Juana de Cárdenas, daughter of Alonso de Cárdenas, Conde of Puebla del Maestre.
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Jia Yuming
1880 - 1964 (84 years)
Jia Yuming was a Chinese Christian theologian and biblical commentator. He worked at several seminaries and eventually became a vice-chairperson of the Communist Party-aligned Three-Self Patriotic Movement. He self-identified as a fundamentalist and taught that "perfect salvation", which in his definition entailed becoming a "Christ-human", was the ultimate goal of all Christians.
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Onofre Pratdesaba
1733 - 1810 (77 years)
Onofre Pratdesaba was a Catalan jesuit and writer. He taught philosophy in Barcelona and theology in Girona. He was expelled by Charles III of Spain and, like many others, he continued to study arts and sciences in Italy.
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James Roosevelt Bayley
1814 - 1877 (63 years)
James Roosevelt Bayley was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as the first Bishop of Newark and the eighth Archbishop of Baltimore . Early life and education Bayley's paternal grandfather, Dr. Richard Bayley, was a professor at Columbia College who created New York's quarantine system. Dr. Bayley had three children by his first wife, among whom was Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was canonized in 1975 as the first American-born Roman Catholic saint. After his first wife's death, Dr. Bayley married Charlotte Amelia Barclay, a member of the Roosevelt family, and the couple had seven children, the sixth of whom was Archbishop Bayley's father, Guy Carleton Bayley, born in 1786.
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Valentin Gröne
1817 - 1882 (65 years)
Valentin Gröne was a Catholic theologian. He obtained a Doctor of Theology from the University of Munich in 1848. In 1868, he became the dean of Irmgarteichen, within Netphen. Known works "Tetzel und Luther oder Lebensgeschichte und Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredigers und Inquisitors Dr. Johann Tetzel aus dem Predigerorden "Die Papst-Geschichte" "Sacramentum oder Begriff und Bedeutung von Sacrament in der alten Kirche bis zur Scholastik" [Brilon , 1853]"Glaube und Wissenschaft" "Der Ablass, seine Geschichte und Bedeutung in der Heilsokonomie" "Compendium der Kirchengeschichte"
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Henry Holden
1596 - 1662 (66 years)
Henry Holden was an English Roman Catholic priest, known as a theologian. Life Henry Holden was the second son of Commodore Holden, of Chaigley, Lancashire, and Shelby Eleanor, his wife. He entered the English College at Douai under the name of Johnson, 18 September 1618. There he studied till 15 July 1623, when he proceeded to Paris, took his degree as Doctor of Divinity, and was made a professor at the Sorbonne. He also became penitentiary at Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet and one of the grand vicars of the Archbishop of Paris.
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Marie Dentière
1495 - 1561 (66 years)
Marie Dentière was a Walloon Protestant reformer and theologian, who moved to Geneva. She played an active role in Genevan religion and politics, in the closure of Geneva's convents, and preaching with such reformers as John Calvin and William Farel. In addition to her writings on the Reformation, Dentière's writings seem to be a defense and propagation of the female perspective in the rapidly changing world. Her second husband, Antoine Froment, was also active in the reformation.
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Walter Blankenburg
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Walter Blankenburg was a German Protestant pastor, director of church music and musicologist, who focused in several publications on liturgy, hymnology, and on the sacred music of the early Baroque period, especially by Johann Sebastian Bach.
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William P. Harrison
1830 - 1895 (65 years)
William Pope Harrison was an American Methodist minister and theologian, and was the 48th Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives. He was an author of books on Methodist theology, most notably The Gospel among the Slaves, the first comprehensive accounting of the religious beliefs of African American slaves in the United States.
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Joseph Ignatius Ritter
1787 - 1857 (70 years)
Joseph Ignatius Ritter was a German historian. He pursued his philosophical and theological studies at the University of Breslau, was ordained priest in 1811, and for several years was engaged in pastoral work.
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Josephus Adjutus
1602 - 1668 (66 years)
Josephus Adjutus , was a famous Chaldean theologian. He advanced some fundamental theories on religion during the Reformation, and criticized corruption in the Catholic church. Biography Josephus was born in Mosul, in present-day Iraq. He apparently came from a family of Chaldean Catholics. After his parents died in 1606, relatives sent Josephus to be brought up in Jerusalem. Until 1613, he lived and was educated in Palestine in a monastery of the Friars Minor, a Franciscan Order. He was made a Deacon in 1632 under Pope Urban VIII. Five years later, in 1637, he earned the title of Doctor of Theology at the Collegium Bononiensis in Bologna.
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Thomas Bouquillon
1840 - 1902 (62 years)
Thomas-Joseph Bouquillon was a Belgian Catholic theologian, priest and professor. Bouquillon was the first professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America and introduced social sciences into its curriculum.
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Anton Friedrich Ludwig Pelt
1799 - 1861 (62 years)
Anton Friedrich Ludwig Pelt was a German Protestant theologian. He studied philosophy and theology at the universities of Jena and Kiel, obtaining his habilitation at the University of Berlin in 1826. While serving as a lecturer of theology at Berlin, he was influenced by the teachings of Friedrich Schleiermacher, August Neander and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In 1828 he became an associate professor at the University of Greifswald, and in 1835 succeeded August Detlev Christian Twesten as a full professor at the University of Kiel. In 1852 he was relieved of his duties at the university following the takeover of Schleswig-Holstein by the Danish government.
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Guibert of Nogent
1055 - 1124 (69 years)
Guibert de Nogent was a Benedictine historian, theologian, and author of autobiographical memoirs. Guibert was relatively unknown in his own time, going virtually unmentioned by his contemporaries. He has only recently caught the attention of scholars who have been more interested in his extensive autobiographical memoirs and personality which provide insight into medieval life.
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Urban T. Holmes III
1930 - 1981 (51 years)
Urban Tigner Holmes III was an Episcopal priest, theologian, and academic during the twentieth century. He was the son of Urban T. Holmes Jr. and Margaret Allan Gemmell Holmes. Following studies at the University of North Carolina, he studied for the priesthood at the former Philadelphia Divinity School. He served as dean of the School of Theology of the University of the South from 1973 until his death. His biggest accomplishment while in Sewanee was the establishment of the Education for Ministry program.
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Hedwig Jahnow
1879 - 1944 (65 years)
Hedwig Jahnow was a German teacher and an Old Testament theologian who studied Rabbinic Dirge, specifically Kinah. In 1919 After winning an election in the first year that women were allowed to vote she became the first woman in the Marburg city council. She later became deputy headmistress of the Marburg Elisabeth School. Hedwig explored women's role in the Old Testament and contributed a number of works on this topic establishing herself as one of Germany's first female biblical scholars. Jahow's work has been cited by modern theologians as foundational to the modern study on the book of La...
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Johannes Malderus
1563 - 1633 (70 years)
Johannes Malderus was the fifth bishop of Antwerp and the founder of Malderus College at the University of Leuven. Life Malderus was born in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw on 14 August 1563, the son of Roger van Malderen and Elizabeth Walravens. His education was overseen by his uncle, Johannes van Malderen, a confidant of Cardinal Granvelle. Malderus studied philosophy at Douai University and theology in Leuven. By 1586 he was teaching philosophy at Pig College, Leuven and on 31 August 1594 he graduated doctor of theology. In 1596 he was appointed regius professor of Scholastic Theology by Philip II of ...
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Robert Burton
1577 - 1640 (63 years)
Robert Burton was an English author and fellow of Oxford University, who wrote the encyclopedic tome The Anatomy of Melancholy. Born in 1577 to a comfortably well-off family of the landed gentry, Burton attended two grammar schools and matriculated into Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1593, age 15. Burton's education at Oxford was unusually lengthy, possibly drawn out by an affliction of melancholy, and saw an early transfer to Christ Church. Burton received an MA and BD, and by 1607 was qualified as a tutor. As early as 1603, Burton indulged his early literary creations at Oxford, including so...
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António Sebastião Valente
1846 - 1908 (62 years)
Dom Sebastião António Valente was a Catholic archbishop and Portuguese colonial administrator, the first Patriarch of the East Indies. Biography Born in El Puerto de Santa María, province of Cadiz , he was the son of Maria João Valente and Bridget Medeiros, a native of Mértola, Portugal. He attended primary school in Beja, graduated in Coimbra and taught in the Seminaries of Viseu and Santarém. He was ordained a deacon on 23 September 1871, and on 25 May 1872 ordained a priest.
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Eilhard Lubinus
1565 - 1621 (56 years)
Eilhard Lubinus was a German Lutheran theologian and philosopher, also known as a social critic, classical scholar, linguist, mathematician and cartographer. He was an influence on Comenius and Leibniz.
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Titus Brandsma
1881 - 1942 (61 years)
Titus Brandsma, OCarm was a Dutch Carmelite friar, Catholic priest and professor of philosophy. Brandsma was vehemently opposed to Nazi ideology and spoke out against it many times before the Second World War. He was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered. He was beatified by the Catholic Church in November 1985 as a martyr of the faith and canonized as a saint on 15 May 2022 by Pope Francis.
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Johannes Andreas August Grabau
1804 - 1879 (75 years)
Johannes Andreas August Grabau was an influential German-American Old Lutheran pastor and theologian. He is usually mentioned as J. A. A. Grabau. Grabau was born in Olvenstedt, Prussia . He was the son of Johann Andreas Grabau and Anna Dorothea Jericho. Grabau was educated at the grammar school in Olvenstedt , the Magdeburg Gymnasium and at the University of Halle .
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Alexander Hill
1785 - 1867 (82 years)
Alexander Hill was a Scottish minister of the Church of Scotland who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1845. He was professor of divinity at the University of Glasgow.
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Arcturus Z. Conrad
1855 - 1937 (82 years)
Arcturus Zodiac Conrad was an American Christian author, theologian, and pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts from 1905 to 1937. He was born in 1855 on a farm in Shiloh, Indiana to a father who was a Presbyterian minister on the frontier. Conrad was primarily of German and English ancestry. In 1882 Conrad graduated from Carleton College, a Congregationalist school in Minnesota. In 1885 he received a B.D. from Union Theological Seminary; during his years at Union his roommate was Arthur Cushman McGiffert, later a noted church historian. Conrad went on to study at New York University, receiving a Ph.D.
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Patrick Hamilton
1504 - 1528 (24 years)
Patrick Hamilton was a Scottish churchman and an early Protestant Reformer in Scotland. He travelled to Europe, where he met several of the leading reformed thinkers, before returning to Scotland to preach. He was tried as a heretic by Archbishop James Beaton, found guilty and handed over to secular authorities to be burnt at the stake in St Andrews as Scotland's first martyr of the Reformation.
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Adam Gottlieb Weigen
1677 - 1727 (50 years)
Adam Gottlieb Weigen was a German pietist, theologian and early animal rights writer. Weigan was the son of a surgeon and was born at Waiblingen in 1677. He studied theology at Württemberg but also took interest in anatomy and natural science. Weigen became a pastor and advocate of pietism in Leonberg. He took up this post in 1705. Weigan was influenced by the writings of Philipp Spener.
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William de la Mare
1300 - 1290 (-10 years)
William de La Mare was an English Franciscan theologian. Biography William de la Mare's origins are unknown. He obtained a master's degree in Paris in 1274/5. In Paris, he came under the influence of Bonaventura and Roger Bacon. He returned to England, and is known to have preached in Lincoln.
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Cornelis Tiele
1830 - 1902 (72 years)
Cornelis Petrus Tiele was a Dutch theologian and scholar of religions. Life Tiele was born at Leiden. He was educated at Amsterdam, first studying at the Athenaeum Illustre, as the communal high school of the capital was then named, and afterwards at the seminary of the Remonstrant Brotherhood.
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Edward Hawarden
1662 - 1735 (73 years)
Edward Hawarden was an English Roman Catholic theologian and controversialist. Life Hawarden was born in Lancashire, England. His family were recusants who maintained domestic chapels in their residences in Appleton in Widnes. Edward, after a course at the English College, Douai, remained there as a classical tutor, and after his ordination , as professor of philosophy.
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Theodor Undereyck
1635 - 1693 (58 years)
Theodor Undereyck was a Protestant pastor, spiritual writer and pioneer of pietism in the German Reformed Church. Theodor Undereyck was born in 1635, the son of businessman Gerhard Undereyck and his wife Sara, née Salanger. After the death of his parents in 1636 by the plague, he grew up as an orphan in the house of his uncle Johann Undereyck in Alstaden.
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Robert Sanderson
1587 - 1663 (76 years)
Robert Sanderson was an English theologian and casuist. Family and education He was born in Sheffield in Yorkshire and grew up at Gilthwaite Hall, near Rotherham. He was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford. Entering the Church, he rose to be Bishop of Lincoln.
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Alexander Geddes
1737 - 1802 (65 years)
Alexander Geddes was a Scottish theologian and scholar. He translated a major part of the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible into English. Translations and commentaries Geddes was born at Rathven, Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parentage, and educated for the priesthood at the local seminary of Scalan, and at Paris; he became a priest in his native county.
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Thomas Burnet
1635 - 1715 (80 years)
Thomas Burnet was an English theologian and writer on cosmogony. Life He was born at Croft near Darlington in 1635. After studying at Northallerton Grammar School under Thomas Smelt, he went to Clare College, Cambridge in 1651. There he was a pupil of John Tillotson. Ralph Cudworth, the Master of Clare, moved to Christ's College, Cambridge in 1654, and Burnet followed him. He became fellow of Christ's in 1657, M.A. in 1658, and was proctor in 1667.
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Thomas Stackhouse
1677 - 1752 (75 years)
Thomas Stackhouse was an English theologian and controversialist. Life The son of John Stackhouse , who became rector of Boldon in County Durham, and uncle of John Stackhouse, he was born at Witton-le-Wear where his father was then curate. On 3 April 1694 he entered at St. John's College, Cambridge and was B.A. when ordained in 1704.
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Martinus Smiglecius
1563 - 1618 (55 years)
Martinus Smiglecius was a Polish Jesuit philosopher and logician, known for his erudite scholastic Logica. Life He was born on 11 November 1564 in Lwów in the Kingdom of Poland . He used the surname Lwowczyk, or Leopolitanus, and later adopted the name Smiglecius . He attended the Jesuit school in Pułtusk and until 1586 studied in Rome, where he joined the Jesuit order in 1581. His education was financed by the prominent Polish statesman Jan Zamojski. He obtained a master's degree in philosophy and a doctor's degree in theology at the Academy of Vilnius, and taught philosophy and theology th...
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Julius Hare
1795 - 1855 (60 years)
Julius Charles Hare was an English theological writer. Early life He was born at Valdagno, near Vicenza, in Italy. His parents were Francis Hare-Naylor and the painter Georgiana Shipley, a daughter of Bishop Shipley. Augustus William Hare was his brother, and his great-grandfather, Francis Hare, was bishop of St Asaph.
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Luis de Lossada
1681 - 1748 (67 years)
Luis de Lossada was a Spanish Jesuit theologian and philosophical writer. Lossada was born at Quiroga, Galicia, Spain. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1698, and, after completing his studies, taught theology, Scripture, and philosophy at Salamanca, where he died.
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John Llewelyn Davies
1826 - 1916 (90 years)
John Llewelyn Davies was an English preacher and theologian, an outspoken foe of poverty and inequality, and was active in Christian socialist groups. He was an original member of the Alpine Club and the first ascendant of the Dom. His daughter was suffragist Margaret Llewelyn Davies. His son Arthur Llewelyn Davies was the father of the boys who were the inspiration for the stories of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. His sister Emily Davies was one of the founders of Girton College.
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Angelo Rocca
1545 - 1620 (75 years)
Angelo Rocca was an Italian humanist, librarian and bishop, founder of the Angelica Library at Rome, afterwards accessible from 1604 as a public library. Biography Angelo Rocca is also known as Cameras Camerinus from the Augustinian monastery at Camerino. He studied at Perugia, Rome and Venice. In 1577 he graduated as a doctor in theology from Padua. After serving as superior-general of the Augustinian Monastery there from 1579, he became the head of the Vatican printing-office in 1585. In 1595 he was appointed sacristan in the papal chapel. In 1605 he was granted the office of titular Bishop...
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Karl Christian Tittmann
1744 - 1820 (76 years)
Karl Christian Tittmann was a German Evangelical Lutheran theologian. Biography Karl Christian Tittmann was the son of pastor Karl Christian Tittmann. In 1756 he attended the Princely School Grimma and graduated from the University of Leipzig in 1762. With the support of Johann August Ernesti, in 1766 he acquired master's degree. In the following year, he took a position as a catechist at the Peterskirche in Leipzig and in 1770 a position as deacon in Langensalza.
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Venance Grumel
1890 - 1967 (77 years)
Venance Grumel was a French theologian and Byzantinist. Biography He was born on 23 May 1890 under the name of François Grumel in La Serraz, in the commune of Le Bourget-du-Lac, in Savoy, France. Orphaned, he began his schooling at the Bocage orphanage, near Chambéry . He joined the Assumptionist, or Augustinians of the Assumption, school of Notre-Dame des Châteaux, in the Tarentaise Valley . Later, he transferred to Mongreno in Italy . Grumel completed his studies in Spain - at Calahorra and Elorrio . On 11 September 1907, he entered the Assumptionist novitiate of Louvain, Belgium, where took the name of Brother Venance.
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Johannes Nider
1380 - 1438 (58 years)
Johannes Nider was a German theologian. Life Nider was born in Swabia. He entered the Order of Preachers at Colmar and after profession was sent to Vienna for his philosophical studies, which he finished at Cologne, where he was ordained. He gained a wide reputation in Germany as a preacher and was active at the Council of Constance. After making a study of the convents of his order of strict observance in Italy he returned to the University of Vienna, where in 1425 he began teaching as Master of Theology.
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Antonio Possevino
1533 - 1611 (78 years)
Antonio Possevino was a Jesuit protagonist of Counter Reformation as a papal diplomat and a Jesuit controversialist, encyclopedist and bibliographer. He was the first Jesuit to visit Muscovy, Sweden, Denmark, Livonia, Hungary, Pomerania, and Saxony in amply documented papal missions between 1578 and 1586 where he championed the enterprising policies of Pope Gregory XIII.
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Johann Smidt
1773 - 1857 (84 years)
Johann Smidt was an important Bremen politician, theologian, and founder of Bremerhaven. Biography Smidt was a son of the Reformed preacher Johann Smidt sen., pastor at St. Stephen Church in Bremen. Smidt jun. studied theology in Jena, and was one of the founders of the Gesellschaft der freien Männer . He was ordained Reformed preacher in Zürich in 1797. He then became Professor of History at the Gymnasium illustre in his hometown. He then became 'Syndikus' for the Älterleute and in 1800 'Ratsherr' , a position in which he exerted considerable influence on the governmental and commercial d...
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Albert Knoll
1796 - 1863 (67 years)
Albert Knoll was an Austrian Capuchin dogmatic theologian. Life He was ordained to the priesthood in November, 1818, and five years later was appointed to teach dogmatic theology in the Capuchin convent at Merano. He held this position for 25 years. Having been elected to the office of definitor general in 1847, he went to Rome, but returned to Bolzano, in 1853, when his term of office had expired.
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