Friedrich Sunder and the boundaries of gender

The article explores the gendered imaginary in the Gnadenleben of Friedrich Sunder (1254–1328) and the formation of clerical masculinity in the context of feminine devotional life. Friedrich Sunder worked as a convent chaplain for a Dominican female community and lived within the convent's area. In his book Sunder employs language, images and devotional practices that can be considered in medieval culture to have been feminine. Almost simultaneously, however, he applied masculine roles and emphasised his own manliness. Although Sunder accepted female forms of religiosity and wrote on practices that were considered especially suitable for women, at the same time his priestly masculinity was defined by the physical boundary the cloister created between the enclosed feminine religiosity and that of a pastoral masculine priesthood. His discussion of gender within the mystical frame defined the boundaries of his own masculinity in the web of different traditions of both the proper way of life and the gendered nature of religious practices.     

Infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) properties of natural aluminum corrosion

In this paper, the infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) property of naturally corroded aluminum and its possible applications in retrospective dosimetry have been briefly studied. Results are interesting, in particular with regard to the efforts of finding new and widely available materials for accident dosimetry. For aluminum corrosion, the dose response was found to be approximately linear between 2–80 Gy and to reach saturation before 300 Gy. The signal also showed good repro-ducibility without significant fading over storage durations of up to four mounts at room temperature. In addition to the luminescence, the corrosion samples were also analysed by X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD), but conclusive identification of the luminescent phase could not be made. It is concluded that the IRSL signals of this material can be favourable for dosimetry research.     

Men in the Communities of Dominican Nuns – Sister‐Books Discussing Priests and Friars

This article discusses the relationship between Dominican nuns and their caregivers (priests and friars) with the help of sister‐books written by the Dominican nuns themselves in the first half of the fourteenth century. My main focus will be on analysing the way religious men were described in these books and asking how this discussion was related to the everyday life of the nuns in the Dominican convents. I will suggest that the sister‐books can give a new and perhaps unexpected view of the relationships between Dominican nuns and their spiritual caregivers, as these texts suggest that nuns preferred local secular priests over the friars, even though they accepted the religious authority of the latter. I will argue that although the sister‐books were literary products, they had a close connection to the lived reality of nuns and that they can tell us about the interaction between nuns and religious men in their service. However, these texts also formed the ideas of nuns and kept the old attitudes towards priests and friars live, even when the interaction might have already taken other forms in practice.