> as lemmas

1655 T. Fuller Church-hist. Brit. vi. 275 Speaking of the coming in of the Brethren of the Sack, as also of the Order of Bethlemites, he welcomes them.

1691 A. Wood Athenæ Oxonienses I. 561 He was a benefactor to the said Vicars, by giving them the Lands which belonged to the Brethren of the Holy Trinity at Totness in Devonshire.

1691 T. Southerne Sir Anthony Love i. 5 A Brokeing brother of Bethlehem, With all his Frippery about him!

1706 tr. L. E. Du Pin New Eccl. Hist. 16th Cent. II. iv. xi. 450 The Brothers of Charity were instituted by St. John de Dieu.

1765 A. Maclaine tr. J. L. von Mosheim Eccl. Hist. I. ii. 744 The famous sect of the Cellite brethren and sisters arose at Antwerp; they were also styled the Alexian brethren and sisters, because St. Alexius was their patron.

1800 T. Haweis Impartial Hist. Church of Christ II. 296 The one bore the name of conventual brethren, the other, brethren of observation.

1834 T. A. Trollope Encycl. Ecclesiastica I. 567 Those who insisted upon the mitigation of the austere injunctions of their founder, were called the Brethren of the Community.

1839 J. Murdock tr. J. L. von Mosheim Inst. Eccl. Hist. II. iii. ii. ii. 317 The..Fratres parvi (Little Brethren), or Fraterculi de paupere vita (Little Brothers of the poor life), were Franciscan monks..who wished to observe the regulations prescribed by their founder St. Francis more perfectly.

1860 A. Edersheim tr. J. H. Kurtz Hist. Christian Church I. §142. 457 The Brethren of the Common Life were an association of pious clergymen founded by Gerhard Groot at Deventer in the Netherlands (1384).

1879 Cassell's Encycl. Dict. I. i. 694/1 Brethren of Alexius:..a sect in the fourteenth century, the same as Cellites.

1938 E. Goudge Towers in Mist (1998) iv. 92 The Carmelites, the Brothers of the Sack and the Crossed Friars soon became..familiar figures.

1996 C. Lindberg European Reformations iii. 57 Luther went to Magdeburg, where he lived and studied at a school run by a pious lay religious organization, the Brethren of the Common Life.

2001 Eng. Hist. Rev. 116 1249 The Humiliati outlived the Brothers of the Sack, the Jesuates and other failed experiments in medieval utopian communitarianism.