SAS Funding Request Sample 2004

SAS Request for Funding: James Melvin, Department of Religious Studies 16 April 2004 I am writing to request assistance to fund a research trip to Madrid, Spain, which will take place from 22 May 2004 through 2 July 2004. As I approach my third year of doctoral study, this will in effect serve as a "scouting" trip to help me explore the materials available for my future dissertation research that I will begin to plan for my proposal after my third year. My dissertation will in some way deal with the Catholic Reforms of the priesthood in the period following the Council of Trent (1545-1563), dealing with the social, cultural, and theological construction of the Counter-Reformation priest in Spain. For my dissertation I plan to use archival materials such as episcopal visitation reports and disciplinary records from the Inquisition, in addition to primary printed materials that were used to propagate the ideals of the Catholic Reforms— especially devotional manuals, confessors' manuals, treatises on the priesthood, and the written lives of individuals who were thought to embody the ethos of post-Tridentine Catholicism. This research will contribute to a better understanding of the interaction between the theoretical and normative side of religion with the embodied practices of religion. While much attention has been given to both sides of this by examining the reforms of "popular religion" by the institutional churches during the reformations of the early-modern period, most existing scholarship remains inadequate because of its dependence on overly-simplified binary oppositions between these two spheres. I hope to contribute to a better understanding of this interaction by examining the reform of, and the reforming actions of, the clergy—a key component of this process, yet one surprisingly unexamined by early-modern historians of religion and society.

My time in Madrid will overlap with Dr. Antonio Feros of the University of Pennsylvania's History Department. Dr. Feros has agreed to introduce me to the research libraries of Madrid, including the Biblioteca Nacional and the Biblioteca de la Palacio Real, both repositories for the printed material of the early-modern Church in Spain.

Additionally, Dr. Feros will introduce me to the Archivo Nacional, which contains most of the Church's records from the period I will be studying. After being oriented with the assistance of Dr. Feros, however, I plan to study written lives of holy men from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain to explore the social and cultural construction of sanctity in the Counter-Reformation—particularly as it was used in the campaign to reform the priesthood and increase clerical authority. At the center of my study is Juan de Avila, a clerical reformer from the sixteenth century credited with providing both the theological ideals and practical methods for reforming the priesthood at the Council of Trent. I plan to compare and contrast the two earliest written lives of Avila with those of other holy men during this period to measure their use as propaganda for the Catholic Reforms. The results of my research will be presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in October 2004.

This time in Madrid will give me not only the opportunity to carry out research that will comprise part of my dissertation, but also provide me with an orientation to the materials that I will be using in my future dissertation research—therefore making future research excursions more efficient.