H. Ashley Hall, currently on leave from the Melanchthon Institute and graduate student at Fordham University in Theology (Patristic Studies/Early Church), was awarded a research fellowship at the Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany through the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst — German Academic Exchange Service). The fellowship is for one calendar year, beginning October 2004. Ashley's research project is entitled `Philipp Melanchthon and the Cappadocians,' which will be a study of the function of these fourth-century Greek Patristic authors (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Gregory of Nyssa) in the work of Philipp Melanchthon, a sixteenth-century Christian Humanist and Lutheran reformer.
As Greek patristic texts became available in western Europe, they were used by Melanchthon, Erasmus and others as a means to condemn Scholasticism and reform the German university curriculum. Cappadocian works were also used by Melanchthon against the Radical Reformers in order to demonstrate both the necessity of philosophy in theology and defend the orthodox creedal formulations of the Trinity and Incarnation.
The Institute for European History was founded in 1950 as an ecumenical center for historical research, particularly in Reformation studies. The Institute awards twenty fellowships to young historians from Europe and overseas. Ashley will be living and working in the domus universitatis, the home of the Institute of European History & will receive a monthly grant in accordance with guidelines set up by the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst- German Academic Exchange Service).