DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP EARLY MODERN HISTORY (FWO-RESEARCH PROJECT)
Project
"Rest in peace". The management of death and burial during the Dutch Revolt.
Burials were highly explosive matters in the sixteenth-century strife between Catholics and Protestants. When Catholics continued to insist on the sacrament of the Last Anointing, a funeral mass led by the priest and a burial in sacred ground, Protestants rejected this ‘ritual industry’, and came to defend a sober ars moriendi and a plain burial indesignated though not sacred cemeteries. For the Holy Roman Empire, the British Isles and France, it has been extensively documented how burials thus induced confessional disputes and even religious violence, but strikingly sources in the early modern Low Countries do not register similar outbursts in or around cemeteries. Hence, this research project examines this absence of outspoken religious violence, by testing the hypothesis that it was eventually prevented through a remarkable management of death at different levels. This management consisted of the multi-level prescriptions of local, central and ecclesiastical authorities on the crucial rite de passage, as well as the engagement of local citizens with the manner in which burials could and should take place. Moreover, it argues that this top-downand bottom-up management of death led to the unforeseen outcome that at least from 1576 onwards, regulation systematically included provisional pacification measures for the ‘other’ confession, a procedure eventually surviving in the Dutch Republic. The project thus aims to explain why the Low Countries were an exception to the rule, and why and how bereaved during the Dutch Revolt could rest in peace.
Profile
- Master in history, with excellent study results (students in their last year can also apply)
- You have experience in working with early modern historical sources, and you dispose of good paleographic skills
- A good command of English, French and Dutch - you are not scared to read archival sources in (church) Latin, Middle French or Middle Dutch.
- You are prepared to stay a longer period abroad in order to carry out research in Utrecht (NL) and Valenciennes (FR)
- You love communicating about your research, whether by (co-authored) articles, papers at international conferences, social media and education
- You are creative and a team player (giving the colloboration behind the project's database and its members)
Offer
- A doctoral fellowship for a period of four years (one year, prolonged with one year and two years respectively after positive evaluations).
- A dynamic research environment with regular research meetings and conferences.
Interested?
Please add to your cv and cover letter, the following information:
- a diploma supplement listing the seperate results of your courses during both BA and MA.
- a pdf-version of your MA-thesis (or a sample chapter of the MA-thesis and your BA-thesis)
- two names of referees who have supervised your earlier papers.
A preselection will take place on the basis of the written applications. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview in the first week of July in the Erasmushuis, Faculty of Arts, Leuven.
The modalities of this interview will be decided by the selection committee.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://icts.kuleuven.be/apps/jobsite/vacatures/54198329