Spiritual autobiographies as sources of the ecumenism: Dag Hammarskjöld’s case

Abstract

An important genre of the theological area, spiritual autobiography is currently undergoing a rediscovery process, because of recent research on this topic. Written by important mystical personalities belonging to different Christian traditions (such as Saint Silouane the Athonite or Saint John of Kronstadt for the Orthodox area, Saint Teresa of Avila for the Catholic one and Dag Hammarskjöld for the Lutheran one), spiritual autobiographies can constitute a valuable source for the understanding of their authors’ thinking and perception of fundamental topics such as ecumenism. Being aware of this aspect, we will start from a case study, namely that of Dag Hammarskjöld, and we will try to see how this category of texts can be used in order to understand the attitude of the authors of spiritual autobiographies and their motivation in the ecumenical space. Contribution: The research helps the reader to see how the spiritual autobiographies can be a source of understanding the ecumenism of mystical vocations, using as example Dag Hammarskjöld’s Markings.

Keywords

• dag hammarskjöld
• markings
• lutheran theology
• western mystics
• ecumenism
• haiku
• literature