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The Alexians, Alexian Brothers or Cellites are a Catholic religious institute or congregation specifically devoted to caring for the sick which has its origin in Europe at the time of the Black Death. The order follows the Augustinian rule.

Their origin was at Mechlin, in Brabant (central Flanders, Belgium) , in the fifteenth century, during the terrible ravages of a pest called the "black death." Certain laymen united under the guidance of a man named Tobias to succour the plague-stricken, without taking any vows or adopting a rule of life. One of their most obvious actions being the burial of those who died from the plague; they were known as "Cellites" (from Latin cella, a cell and hence a grave). Later on, they chose as their patron St. Alexius, a saint who served many years in a hospital at Edessa in Syria; and thenceforth they called themselves the Alexian Brothers.

They spread rapidly through Germany, Brabant, Flanders, and other countries. As they were also styled Lollhorden (Old Germ. lollon, to sing softly) from their chants for the dead, they have consequently been sometimes confounded with the Wyclifian sect of heretics, the Lollards. They did not escape calumny and persecution, as appears from the Papal Bull "Ad Audientiam Nostram" (2 December, 1377) which Gregory XI sent to the German bishops, especially those of Cologne, Trier and Mainz, forbidding annoyance of the Cellites and enjoining punishment for their persecutors. This was followed by Bulls of a similar tenor from Boniface IX (7 January, 1396), Eugene IV (12 May, 1431), Nicholas V and Pius II.

In 1469, the mother-house at Aix-la-Chapelle voiced the general feeling of the Brothers in asking the Louis de Bourbon, prince-bishop of Liège to raise that house to a convent of the Order of St. Augustine. This request was granted, and Father Dominicus Brock and five of the Brothers took the solemn vows of religious. This step and the revised constitution of the Order were confirmed by Pius IX on 12 September, 1870.

In the early 20th century the Alexian Brothers had four hospitals in the United States. The first was built in Chicago, 1866; destroyed by the great fire, 9 October 1871, and rebuilt the following year. The second, erected at St. Louis in 1869, covers an acre with its departments for the insane, nervous diseases, and inebriates. The third is at Oshkosh, Wisconsin (1880). The fourth was built at Elizabeth, N.J., on land given for that purpose by Right Rev. Bishop Wigger. Competent surgeons and physicians attend to the patients, and the Brothers nurse and do the housework of the hospitals.

Bishop Vaughan of Salford, England (later, Cardinal), invited the Alexian Brothers to take charge of a new home and hospital in his diocese, which led to their establishing themselves in England in June, 1875. Dr. Lacy, Bishop of Middlesborough, secured them for his diocese in 1884. In 1885, the Brothers established a Province of their Order and a novitiate in the United Kingdom. The latter, first attached to St. Mary's Convent, Newton Heath, Manchester, was later transferred to Twyford Abbey, near Ealing, which the Alexian Brothers had purchased.

The American branch of the order provide services in acute care, residential elderly care, retirement centers, and AIDS ministry in Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Chicago, and also outside the USA in the Philippines and Hungary.

The contemporary British and Irish establishments in London, Manchester, Dublin and Limerick include facilities for the elderly sick and physically handicapped through a nursing home and Day Centre; an AIDS ministry; care and rehabilitation of homeless men; and support for people suffering from mental illness.

On the European continent the contemporary German branch of the order has houses in Aachen, Krefeld, Malseneck, Munster and Twistringen. In Belgium they have centres in Boechout, Tienen, Grimbergen and Henri-Chapelle where they provide psychiatric services.

• This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
• This article includes content derived from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1914, which is in the public domain.

• The Alexian Brothers International website
• Alexian Brother facilities in the USA
• International Order of St. Augustine
• Text of the Rule of St. Augustine
• Order of the Hermit Friars of St. Augustine (O.S.A.)