WHITE BROTHERS. – A sect that appeared in Prussia at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Its adherents took this name because they wore white mantles on which was marked a green cross of St Andrew. They claimed to have special revelations for the reconquest of the Holy Land from the hands of the infidels. The sect had a brief existence and was confined to Germany alone.
BIBL.: C. Hartnack, Dissertatio 14 de origine religionis christianae in Prussia, cited in: Le grandi dittionarie storico, V. Amsterdam 1740, cols. 196. Lucchesio Spülings