Authors

The historical authors of the prayers in this collection, listed in chronological order. The span runs from Tertullian of Carthage, who died around 220 AD and was the first major Christian theologian to write in Latin, to Reinhold Niebuhr, who died in 1971.

Between them are the Greek and Syriac fathers, Ephrem, Basil, Chrysostom; the medieval Latin writers, Anselm, Aquinas, Thomas a Kempis; the Reformers on both sides of the argument, Luther, Cranmer, Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola; the Puritans and the Wesleys; and Sojourner Truth, who could not read or write and whose prayers survive because other people wrote them down.

Attribution is not uniform across them. Of the 29 authors here, 20 carry a secure attribution and 9 are traditional or disputed. Where a prayer's authorship is contested, the prayer page says so and gives the current scholarly view rather than repeating the traditional claim.