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,
#4801
Raymond of Sabunde
1385 - 1436 (51 years)
Raymond of Sabunde was a Catalan scholar, teacher of medicine and philosophy and finally regius professor of theology at Toulouse. He was born in Barcelona , and died in Toulouse. His Theologia Naturalis sive Liber naturae creaturarum, etc., written 1434–1436 but published in 1484, marks an important stage in the history of natural theology. It was first written in Latin . His followers composed a more classical Latin version of the work. It was translated into French by Michel de Montaigne and edited in Latin at various times .
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Ian Theodor Beelen
1807 - 1884 (77 years)
Ian Theodor Beelen was a Dutch exegete and orientalist. Life After a course of studies at Rome, crowned by the Doctorate of Theology, he was in 1836 appointed Professor of Sacred Scripture and Oriental languages in the recently reorganized Catholic University of Leuven. This position he held till 1876, when he resigned his place to his pupil, Thomas Joseph Lamy.
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Richard McIlwaine
1834 - 1913 (79 years)
Richard McIlwaine was the eleventh President of Hampden–Sydney College from 1883 to 1904. He wrote an autobiographical account of his life experiences titled Memories of Three Score Years and Ten.
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Thomas Hartwell Horne
1780 - 1862 (82 years)
Thomas Hartwell Horne was an English theologian and librarian. Life He was born in London and educated at Christ's Hospital until he was 15 when his father died and he had to work. He then became a clerk to a barrister, and used his spare time to write.
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John of Montson
1340 - 1412 (72 years)
John of Montson was an Aragonese Dominican theologian and controversialist. His refusal to tolerate other beliefs regarding the Immaculate Conception resulted in his condemnation and clandestine exile to Spain.
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Tilemann Heshusius
1527 - 1588 (61 years)
Tilemann Heshusius was a Gnesio-Lutheran theologian and Protestant reformer. Life Heshusius came from an influential family in Wesel. He was a student of Philipp Melanchthon at the University of Wittenberg and was consequently close to him. During the time of the Augsburg Interim, he lived in Oxford and Paris. In 1550 he took his master's degree and was received by the Senate of the philosophical faculty; he lectured on rhetoric and as well as theology. In 1553 he became Superintendent in Goslar and acquired his doctoral degree in Wittenberg on 19 May that year at the expense of the city. H...
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Tobias Clausnitzer
1619 - 1684 (65 years)
Tobias Clausnitzer was a German Lutheran pastor and hymn writer. Leben und Wirken Born in Thum, Clausnitzer studied theology at the University of Leipzig from 1642. In 1644, he became military chaplain for a unit of the Swedish army. When the Thirty Years' War ended, he held a service celebrating the Peace of Westphalia in Weiden in der Oberpfalz in 1649. He settled, became pastor, and later also and inspector of Parkstein and Weiden. He died in 1684 as Superintendent in Weiden.
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Albrecht Wolters
1822 - 1878 (56 years)
Albrecht Julius Constantin Wolters was a German Protestant theologian. He was the father of classical archaeologist Paul Wolters . He studied theology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, where he was a pupil of August Neander. After passing his first theological examination, he spent three years as a tutor in Naples, then serving as an assistant pastor in the city of Krefeld . In 1850 became a teacher at a higher Töchterschule in Cologne, and from July 1851 to May 1857, worked as a pastor in Wesel.
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Gerald of Wales
1146 - 1220 (74 years)
Gerald of Wales was a Cambro-Norman priest and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He studied and taught in France and visited Rome several times, meeting the Pope. He was nominated for several bishoprics but turned them down in the hope of becoming Bishop of St Davids, but was unsuccessful despite considerable support. His final post was as Archdeacon of Brecon, from which he retired to academic study for the remainder of his life. Much of his writing survives.
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Nils Wallerius
1706 - 1764 (58 years)
Nils Wallerius was a Swedish physicist, philosopher and theologian. He was one of the first scientists to study and document the characteristics of evaporation through modern scientific methods. He was also among the first and more notable followers of the philosophies of German philosopher Christian Wolff .
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Hermann Strack
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Hermann Leberecht Strack was a German Protestant theologian and orientalist; born in Berlin. Biography From 1877, Strack was assistant professor of Old Testament exegesis and Semitic languages at the University of Berlin. He was the foremost Christian authority in Germany on Talmudic and rabbinic literature, and studied rabbinics under Steinschneider. Since the reappearance of anti-Semitism in Germany, Strack had been the champion of the Jews against the attacks of such men as Hofprediger Adolf Stoecker, Professor August Rohling, and others. In 1885 Strack became the editor of Nathanael. Zeit...
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Franz Boll
1805 - 1875 (70 years)
Franz Christian Boll was a Lutheran theologian and historian. He was the father of physiologist Franz Christian Boll , and the brother of naturalist Ernst Boll , with whom he collaborated throughout his career.
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Stephen Nye
1648 - 1719 (71 years)
Stephen Nye was an English clergyman, known as a theological writer and for his Unitarian views. Life Son of John Nye, he graduated B.A. at Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1665. He became rector of Little Hormead, Hertfordshire in 1679. Thomas Firmin was a close associate.
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George Smeaton
1814 - 1889 (75 years)
George Smeaton was a 19th-century Scottish theologian and Greek scholar. Life He was born in Berwickshire on 8 April 1814. He studied Theology at Edinburgh University and Divinity Hall in Edinburgh. From around 1835 he operated as an urban missionary in North Leith, the harbour area of Edinburgh.
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Isaac of Troki
1533 - 1594 (61 years)
Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, Karaite scholar and polemical writer Works Isaac's learning earned him the respect and deference of his fellow Karaites, and his knowledge of the Latin and Polish languages and of Christian dogmatics enabled him to engage in amicable conversations on religious subjects not only with Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox clergymen, but also with Socinian and other sectarian elders. The fruit of these personal contacts, and of Isaac Troki's concurrent extensive reading in the New Testament and the Christian theological and anti-Jewish literature, was his famous apology of Judaism entitled Hizzuk Emunah .
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Hilarius of Sexten
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
Hilarius of Sexten was an Austrian Capuchin moral theologian. Life After a course of studies at Brixen, he entered the Capuchin Franciscan Order in 1858 and was ordained priest in 1862. Having labored in parochial duties for some years, he was appointed to teach moral theology at Meran in 1872. Both secular and regular clergy consulted him in difficult cases.
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Tomas de Lemos
1555 - 1629 (74 years)
Tomás de Lemos was a Spanish Dominican theologian and controversialist. Life At an early age he entered the Order of St. Dominic in his native town; he obtained, in 1590 the lectorate in theology and was at the same time appointed regent of studies in the convent of St. Paul at Valladolid. In 1594 he was assigned to the chair of theology in the university of that city.
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Alexander Viets Griswold Allen
1841 - 1908 (67 years)
Alexander Viets Griswold Allen was an American author, Episcopal clergyman and theologian. Biography Allen was born in Otis, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1841, to Ethan and Lydia Child Allen, née Burr.
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Diego Alvarez
1550 - 1635 (85 years)
Diego Álvarez was a Spanish theologian who opposed Molinism. He was archbishop of Trani from 1607 to his death. Life Diego Álvarez was born at Medina de Rioseco, Old Castile, about 1555. He entered the Dominican Order in his native city, and taught theology for twenty years in the Spanish cities of Burgos, Trianos, Plasencia, and Valladolid, and for ten years at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome. From 1603 to 1606 he was elected Regent of the Collegium Divi Thomae of the Dominicans in Rome.
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Hans Lietzmann
1875 - 1942 (67 years)
Hans Lietzmann was a German Protestant theologian and church historian who was a native of Düsseldorf. He initially studied in Jena, then continued his education in Bonn, where he was a student of Hermann Usener. In 1905 he was appointed professor of church history at the University of Jena, and in 1923 was a successor to Adolf von Harnack at the University of Berlin. During his career he obtained an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, and in 1927 became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He died in Locarno, Switzerland on 25 June 1942.
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Giusto Fontanini
1666 - 1736 (70 years)
Giusto Fontanini was a Roman Catholic archbishop and an Italian historian. Biography A prelate and attentive bibliophile, in 1697 became a stubborn and reactionary defender of the Papal Curia. In 1708, he was a protagonist of a contentious controversy over the possession of the territory of Comacchio between the Papacy and the Este Dukes of Modena along with their protector, the Austrian Hapsburg empire. In 1597, the then Duke of Ferrara Alfonso II d'Este died without heirs. While the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II recognized as heir to Alfonso, his cousin Cesare d'Este, his dubious legitimacy led the papal states to claim the Duchy of Ferrara, including Comacchio.
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Francisco de Enzinas
1518 - 1552 (34 years)
Francisco de Enzinas , also known by the humanist name Francis Dryander , was a classical scholar, translator, author, Protestant reformer and apologist of Spanish origin. Family and education Francisco de Enzinas was born in Burgos, Spain, probably on 1 November 1518. He was one of ten children of the successful wool merchant Juan de Enzinas. The mater of his correspondence was his stepmother, Beatriz de Santa Cruz, whose family included the wealthy Low Countries merchant Jerónimo de Salamanca Santa Cruz and the churchman Alonso de Santa Cruz, treasurer of Burgos Cathedral.
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Carl Peter Wilhelm Gramberg
1797 - 1830 (33 years)
Carl Peter Wilhelm Gramberg was a German theologian and biblical scholar. Biography Gramberg attended university at Halle, where he studied Hebrew Bible and Theology under Wilhelm Gesenius and Julius Wegscheider. His major work, in addition to commentaries on Chronicles and Genesis, was the Kritische Geschichte der Religionsideen des alten Testaments, of which he published two of a projected four volumes before his death in Oldenburg at the age of thirty-three.
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Domenico Palmieri
1829 - 1909 (80 years)
Domenico Palmieri was an Italian Jesuit scholastic theologian. Life He studied in his native city, where he was ordained priest in 1852. On 6 June 1852, he entered the Society of Jesus, where he completed his studies. He taught in several places, first rhetoric, then philosophy, theology, and the Sacred Scriptures. In these courses, especially during the sixteen years that he was professor in the Roman College, he acquired a reputation as a philosopher.
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Pierre Chaillet
1900 - 1972 (72 years)
Pierre Chaillet was a French Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus , who was recognised as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem for his work to protect Jews from the Nazi Holocaust. The Amitiés Chrétiennes organisation operated out of Lyon to secure hiding places for Jewish children. Among its members was the Jesuit Pierre Chaillet. The influential French theologian Henri de Lubac SJ was active in the resistance to Nazism and to antisemitism. He assisted in the publication of Témoinage chrétien with Pierre Chaillet, responding to Neo-paganism and antisemitism with clarity, describing t...
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Julius Guttmann
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
Julius Guttmann , born Yitzchak Guttmann , was a German-born rabbi, Jewish theologian, and philosopher of religion. Biography Julius was born to Jakob Guttmann while Jakob served as Chief Rabbi at Hildesheim during the years 1874 to 1892, when Hildesheim still had a large Jewish population. Jakob himself published papers on a number of philosophical topics. The family moved to Breslau in 1880.
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Reginald Heber
1783 - 1826 (43 years)
Reginald Heber was an English Anglican bishop, a man of letters, and hymn-writer. After 16 years as a country parson, he served as Bishop of Calcutta until his death at the age of 42. The son of a rich landowner and cleric, Heber gained fame at the University of Oxford as a poet. After graduation he made an extended tour of Scandinavia, Russia and Central Europe. Ordained in 1807, he took over his father's old parish, Hodnet, Shropshire. He also wrote hymns and general literature, including a study of the works of the 17th-century cleric Jeremy Taylor.
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Veit Erbermann
1597 - 1675 (78 years)
Veit Erbermann was a German theologian and controversialist. He was born at Rendweisdorff, in Bavaria, to Lutheran parents, but at an early age he became a Roman Catholic, and on 30 May 1620, entered the Society of Jesus. After completing his ecclesiastical studies he taught philosophy and Scholastic theology, first at Mainz and afterwards at Würzburg. Subsequently he was appointed rector of the pontifical seminary at Fulda, which position he held for seven years.
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Jakob Ebert
1549 - 1614 (65 years)
Jakob Ebert was a German theologian and poet. Life Born in Sprottau, Ebert was the son of . He was school director in Soldin, Schwiebus and Grünberg. From 1594 he was on the faculty of the university in Frankfurt , teaching theology.
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Hermias
Hermias was an obscure Christian apologist, presumed to have lived in 3rd century. Nothing is known of him, except his name. He wrote a Derision of gentile philosophers , a short parody on Greek philosophical themes . From Paul's statement in the First Epistle to the Corinthians that "all worldly knowledge is foolishness to God" he affirms that all philosophical doctrines come from the apostasy of the angels and therefore wrong and laughable. Hermias relies rather on cynical and skeptical culture critique and on philosophical biographies and anedoctes than in their real writings.
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Dominic Schram
1722 - 1797 (75 years)
Dominic Schram, sometimes spelled Schramm was a German Benedictine theologian and canonist. Biography He was born at Bamberg. He took vows at Banz near Bamberg in 1743, and after being ordained priest on 18 August 1748, taught at his monastery: at first mathematics , then canon law , philosophy and soon after theology. In 1782 he reluctantly accepted the position of prior in the monastery of Michelsberg at Bamberg, whence he returned to Banz in 1787, where he died ten years later.
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Gregorios Papamichael
1875 - 1956 (81 years)
Gregorios Papamichael was a theologian of the Orthodox Church of Greece and a renowned professor at the Theology School of the University of Athens . He examined diligently various cultural aspects of church life and is jointly credited, together with his close friend Archbishop Chrysostomos I of Athens , for establishing the two basic academic journals of Neohellenic theology: Theologia and Ekklesia. In addition, he was responsible for the modern rediscovery of two almost forgotten great personalities of Orthodoxy, namely Gregorios Palamas and Maximos the Greek.
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Domenico Viva
1648 - 1726 (78 years)
Domenico Viva was an Italian Jesuit theologian. Life Viva was born at Lecce, and entered the Society of Jesus 12 May 1663. He taught the humanities and Greek, nine years' philosophy, eight years moral theology, eight years' Scholastic theology, was two years prefect of studies, was rector of the College of Naples in 1711, and provincial of Naples.
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Hermann Theodor Wangemann
1818 - 1894 (76 years)
Hermann Theodor Wangemann was a German theologian and missionary. Wangemann's father, Johannes Theodosius, arrived with his family in Demmin in Pomerania around 1821, where he became a subrector and later received the title of music director. Hermann Theodor attended the town school here, followed by the Gymnasium in Berlin from 1832 to 1836. After studying theology at the University of Berlin, Wangemann first held a position as a house teacher in Bern from 1840 to 1844. During this time he was awarded a doctorate in Theology by the University of Halle. From 1845 he worked as a rector and ass...
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Pietro Maria Gazzaniga
1722 - 1799 (77 years)
Pietro Maria Gazzaniga was an Italian Dominican theologian. Life At a very early age he entered the Order of St. Dominic, and studied the various branches of ecclesiastical sciences, especially philosophy and theology. He was then, despite his youth, appointed to teach philosophy and church history, first in the various houses of his order and later at the University of Bologna.
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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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