CELLITES (ALEXIANS), BROTHERS OF. - A society of lay brothers founded in the 14th century in Romania for the care of the sick. Several such charitable societies are found in the same century, especially during the terrible European plague of 1348, when Clement VI granted spiritual graces to those who lent their labor on behalf of the victims of such a calamity. The C. survived this epidemic, indeed they underwent a strong development.
They were also called Alexians after their patron St. Alexius. More common, however, until the present has remained their appellation of C., derived from Zelle, that is, chamber, or burial, as some believe, because among the good works to which they devoted themselves was that of burying the dead. In the Low Countries they were called Lollards. We find the name of C. for the first time in a bull of Eugene IV of 1431. With another of 1459 Pius II prescribed that they live with religious vows, since until then they had contented themselves with the common life without a determined rule, although it seems that in some house that of the Franciscan Third Order was observed. Finally Sixtus IV, in 1472, imposed the Augustinian rule on all, granting at the same time a series of privileges, later confirmed by Julius II and Urban VIII. As a consequence of this the C. spread greatly in Germany, in Belgium and in Holland, but during the French Revolution and in the following social and political upheavals they were almost extinguished. Some convents still exist in Germany with the mother house of Aachen, in Belgium, in England and in the United States. The habit is a black tonsure with the scapular of the same color and a round hood. More numerous are the Callettine or Alexian Sisters, also called, from their dress, "Black Sisters," in all things similar to the C.
There are counted today ca. 400 religious.