Ronnie Hsia
· Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of HistoryPennsylvania State University · History
Active 1981–2025
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About
Ronnie Hsia is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History at Penn State University. His research has focused on the history of the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Renewal, anti-Semitism, and the encounter between Europe and Asia. His current book project, tentatively titled Translating Christianity: China and the Catholic Missions 1584-1780, studies the cultural encounter between Counter-Reformation Europe and the Ming and Qing empires. Hsia teaches courses in early modern Europe and is interested in developing world history and comparative history courses for the early modern period, with a particular emphasis on the history of religion and empires. With a background in Chinese history and culture, born and educated in Hong Kong, he studied primarily in the UK and the USA, and has extensive research experience across Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Austria, and Italy. His scholarly contributions include publications on the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the history of anti-Semitism, and he has broadened his research to a global perspective, encompassing the history of explorations, the rise of Western Europe, early modern empires, and Christian missions, especially in China.
Research topics
- History
- Art
- Ancient history
- Archaeology
- Art history
- Classics
- Humanities
- Political Science
- Literature
- Aesthetics
Selected publications
Cosmos and Materiality in Early Modern Prague
Cultural and Social History · 2022 · 33 citations
1st authorCorrespondingWar Saints: The Canonization of 1622
Journal of Early Modern Christianity · 2022 · 3 citations
1st authorCorrespondingAbstract The five new saints added to the feast days of the Catholic Church in 1622 occurred in the middle of two wars: the 30 Years’ War in Central Europe between Protestants and Catholics, and the resumption of the struggle by the Dutch to gain independence from Spain. Coming as the result of intense lobbying by different ecclesiastical and political interests, the canonization of 1622 provided an excellent window to observe the mentality of Counter-Reformation Europe. This is accomplished by…
A Holy Flood of Saints: The 1622 Canonizations
Journal of Early Modern Christianity · 2022-11-01 · 2 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingJournal of Religious History · 2025-04-08
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingChange in World History, Strathern's 2019 book, in which he advances a theory on "ruler conversion" to understand the "Axial Age," the period referred to by Karl Jaspers between the eighth and third centuries BCE, characterised by the emergence of major religious and philosophical systems such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Christianity, and Islam.Two key concepts were employed in Unearthly Powers -Immanentism and Transcendentalismto explain religious conversions.Strathern defines Immanentis…
Martyrdom and Sacred Violence in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century China
Brepols Publishers eBooks · 2025-01-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis paper compares Christian discourses on martyrdom produced by European missionaries in China between the late sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries and indigenous discourses of sacred violence that emerged primarily from Buddhist and Daoist contexts. Actual repression against Christianity flared up occasionally in the seventeenth century and claimed missionary martyrs only in the eighteenth century. While the scale of persecution paled in comparison with the eradication of Christianity in T…
Frequent coauthors
- 36 shared
Volker R. Berghahn
- 36 shared
Maria Todorova
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- 36 shared
Konrad H. Jarausch
- 36 shared
Kees Gispen
University of Mississippi
- 36 shared
István Deák
- 36 shared
Nancy M. Wingfield
- 36 shared
Hillel J. Kieval
Washington University in St. Louis
- 13 shared
Pierre-Antoine Fabre
Awards & honors
- Käte Hamburger Fellow, Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany (201…
- Humanities Doctoral Seminar Grant, Mellon Foundation (2009-2…
- Institute of Arts and Humanities Resident Scholarship, Penn…
- Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study Fellowship (2005-200…
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