PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: religious literature
German religious leader
Martin Luther was a German theologian and religious reformer who was the catalyst of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Through his words and actions, Luther precipitated a movement that reformulated...
Christian bishop and theologian
St. Augustine ; feast day August 28) was the bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, one of the Latin Fathers of the Christian church, and perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. Augustine’s...
French theologian
John Calvin was a theologian and ecclesiastical statesman. He was the leading French Protestant reformer and the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. His interpretation...
English author
John Bunyan was a celebrated English minister and preacher, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the book that was the most characteristic expression of the Puritan religious outlook. His other works...
British critic
Matthew Arnold was an English Victorian poet and literary and social critic, noted especially for his classical attacks on the contemporary tastes and manners of the “Barbarians” (the aristocracy), the...
British theologian
St. John Henry Newman ; beatified September 19, 2010, canonized October 13, 2019; feast day October 9) was an influential English churchman and man of letters of the 19th century who led the Oxford movement...
English author [1835-1902]
Samuel Butler was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress. The Way of All Flesh (1903), his autobiographical...
French abbot
St. Bernard of Clairvaux ; canonized January 18, 1174; feast day August 20) was a Cistercian monk and mystic, founder and abbot of the abbey of Clairvaux (France), and one of the most influential churchmen...
Italian theologian
Saint Bonaventure ; canonized April 14, 1482; feast day July 15) was a leading medieval theologian, minister general of the Franciscan order, and cardinal bishop of Albano. He wrote several works on the...
Italian mystic
St. Catherine of Siena ; canonized 1461; feast day April 29) was an Italian mystic and Dominican tertiary who is one of the most revered holy women in the Roman Catholic Church. One of the patron saints...
Spanish mystic
St. Teresa of Ávila ; canonized 1622; feast day October 15) was a Spanish nun, one of the great mystics and religious women of the Roman Catholic Church, and an author of spiritual classics. She was the...
English clergyman and writer
John Newton was an English slave trader who became an Anglican minister, a hymn writer, and later a noted abolitionist, best known for his hymn “Amazing Grace.” His transformation from a faithless seaman...
Benedictine monk and abbot
Adso of Montier-en-Der was a Benedictine monk and abbot whose treatise on the Antichrist became the standard work on the subject from the mid-10th to the 13th century. Born of a noble family, Adso was...
Irish-born American theologian
John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-born American theologian and former Roman Catholic priest best known for his association with the Jesus Seminar, an organization of revisionist biblical scholars, and his...
Anglo-Saxon historian
St. Bede the Venerable ; canonized 1899; feast day May 25) was an Anglo-Saxon theologian, historian, and chronologist. St. Bede is best known for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical...
British author
G.K. Chesterton was an English critic and author of verse, essays, novels, and short stories, known also for his exuberant personality and rotund figure. (Read Chesterton’s 1929 Britannica essay on Dickens.)...
French philosopher
Godfrey of Saint-Victor was a French monk, philosopher, theologian, and poet whose writings summarized an early medieval Christian Humanism that strove to classify areas of knowledge, to integrate distinctive...
Irish poet
AE was an Irish poet, artist, and mystic who became a leading figure in the Irish literary renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The name AE (or Æ) is the pseudonym of George William Russell,...
British rabbi and author
Jonathan Sacks was an English rabbi, educator, and author who served as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth (1991–2013). Sacks was born into a family of Jewish merchants....
Spanish theologian
St. Isidore of Sevilla ; canonized 1598; feast day April 4) was a Spanish theologian, archbishop, and encyclopedist and the last of the Western Latin Fathers. His Etymologies, an encyclopedia of human...
Roman Catholic nun
St. Thérèse of Lisieux ; canonized May 17, 1925; feast day October 1) was a Carmelite nun whose service to her Roman Catholic order, although outwardly unremarkable, was later recognized for its exemplary...
Spanish religious reformer
St. John of Ávila ; canonized 1970; feast day May 10) was a Roman Catholic reformer, author, and spiritual director. One of the greatest preachers of his time, his religious leadership in 16th-century...
English author
Karen Armstrong is an English author of books on religion who is widely regarded as one of the leading commentators on the subject. At age 17 Armstrong entered a Roman Catholic convent. Though she had...
archbishop of Canterbury
St. Edmund of Abingdon ; feast day November 16) was a distinguished scholar and outspoken archbishop of Canterbury, one of the most virtuous and attractive figures of the English church, whose literary...
historian, statesman, and monk
Cassiodorus was a historian, statesman, and monk who helped to save the culture of Rome at a time of impending barbarism. During the period of the Ostrogothic kings in Italy, Cassiodorus was quaestor (507–511),...
British priest and poet
John Keble was an Anglican priest, theologian, and poet who originated and helped lead the Oxford Movement (q.v.), which sought to revive in Anglicanism the High Church ideals of the later 17th-century...
British jurist and author
Thomas Hughes was an English jurist, reformer, and novelist best known for Tom Brown’s School Days and its sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford, which popularized the ideology of Muscular Christianity. Hughes attended...
Japanese Buddhist monk
Kūkai was one of the best-known and most-beloved Buddhist saints in Japan, founder of the Shingon (“True Word”) school of Buddhism that emphasizes spells, magic formulas, ceremonials, and masses for the...
Cistercian monk
Saint Aelred of Rievaulx was a writer, historian, and outstanding Cistercian abbot who influenced monasticism in medieval England, Scotland, and France. His feast day is celebrated by the Cistercians on...
English mystic
Julian of Norwich ; feast day May 13 [also celebrated on May 8]) was a celebrated English Christian mystic and hermit whose Revelations of Divine Love (or Showings) is considered one of the most remarkable...
German mystic
Heinrich Suso was one of the chief German mystics and leaders of the Friends of God (Gottesfreunde), a circle of devout ascetic Rhinelanders who opposed contemporary evils and aimed for a close association...
Japanese religious philosopher and writer
Uchimura Kanzō was a Japanese Christian who was an important formative influence on many writers and intellectual leaders of modern Japan. Uchimura came from a samurai (warrior) family and studied (1878–81)...
English minister
Richard Baxter was a Puritan minister who influenced 17th-century English Protestantism. Known as a peacemaker who sought unity among the clashing Protestant denominations, he was the centre of nearly...
English poet
Thomas Traherne was the last of the mystical poets of the Anglican clergy, which included most notably George Herbert and Henry Vaughan. The son of a shoemaker, Traherne was educated at Brasenose College,...
Roman Catholic priest and theologian
St. Alphonsus Liguori ; canonized 1839; feast day August 1) was an Italian doctor of the church, one of the chief 18th-century moral theologians, and founder of the Redemptorists, a congregation dedicated...
American religious leader
John Woolman was a British-American Quaker leader and abolitionist whose Journal is recognized as one of the classic records of the spiritual inner life. Until he was 21 Woolman worked for his father,...
French bishop
St. Francis of Sales ; canonized 1665; feast day January 24) was a Roman Catholic bishop of Geneva who was active in the struggle against Calvinism and cofounded the order of Visitation nuns. He wrote...
Christian missionary
St. Columban ; feast day November 23) was an Irish Christian abbot and writer and one of the greatest missionaries of the Celtic Church. He initiated a revival of spirituality on the European continent....
clergyman
Thomas à Kempis was a Christian theologian, the probable author of Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ), a devotional book that, with the exception of the Bible, has been considered one of the most influential...
Byzantine monk
Saint Symeon the New Theologian was a Byzantine monk and mystic, termed the New Theologian to mark his difference from two key figures in Greek Christian esteem, St. John the Evangelist and the 4th-century...
Byzantine monk
Saint John Climacus ; feast day March 30) was a Byzantine monk and author of Climax tou paradeisou (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, the source of his name “John of the Ladder”), a handbook on the ascetical...
British author
Jeremy Taylor was an Anglican clergyman and writer. Taylor was educated at the University of Cambridge and was ordained in 1633. He never lacked for patrons: Archbishop Laud granted him a fellowship to...
German theologian
Johann Arndt was a German Lutheran theologian whose mystical writings were widely circulated in Europe in the 17th century. Arndt studied at Helmstadt, Wittenberg, Strasbourg, and Basel. In 1583 he became...
archbishop of Genoa
Jacobus De Voragine was the archbishop of Genoa, a chronicler, and the author of the Golden Legend. Jacobus became a Dominican in 1244. After gaining a reputation throughout northern Italy as a preacher...
English poet and martyr
Robert Southwell was an English poet and martyr remembered for his saintly life as a Jesuit priest and missionary during a time of Protestant persecution and for his religious poetry. Southwell was educated...
Greek monk
Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite ; canonized May 31, 1955) was a Greek Orthodox monk and author of ascetic prayer literature. He was influential in reviving the practice of Hesychasm, a Byzantine method of...
English Jesuit
Robert Parsons was a Jesuit who, with Cardinal William Allen, organized Roman Catholic resistance in England to the Protestant regime of Queen Elizabeth I. He favoured armed intervention by the Continental...
American colonial leader
John Cotton was an influential New England Puritan leader who served principally as “teacher” of the First Church of Boston (1633–52) after escaping the persecution of Nonconformists by the Church of England....
American minister and author
James Freeman Clarke was a Unitarian minister, theologian, and author whose influence helped elect Grover Cleveland president of the United States in 1884. After graduating from Harvard College in 1829...
British mystic
Richard Rolle was an English mystic and author of mystical and ascetic tracts. Rolle attended the University of Oxford but, dissatisfied with the subjects of study and the disputatiousness there, left...
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