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" (Lat. cella, a cell and hence, a grave). Later on, they chose as their patron, Alexius, a saint who served many years in a hospital at Edessa in Syria; and thenceforth they called themselves the Alexian Brothers. 
Alexian BrotherThey 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 Bull "Ad Audientiam Nostram" (2 Dec., 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 Jan., 1396), Eugenius 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 Prince Bishop of Liège, Louis de Bourbon, 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 (12 Sept., 1870).
The Alexian Brothers have four hospitals in the United States. The first was built in Chicago, 1866; destroyed by the great fire, 9 Oct., 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, Wis. (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 are nurses 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. In England they do not have any asylums for the care of the insane, as in Germany, Belgium, and America. The English establishments are only for the aged and infirm.
Steele, Monasteries and Religious Houses of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1903), 10–13; cf. Brief History of the Alexian Brothers (Chicago).
Alexis Falconieri, Saint, b. in Florence, 1200; d. 17 February, 1310, at Mount Senario, near Florence. He was the son of Bernard Falconieri, a merchant prince of Florence, and one of the leaders of the Republic. His family belonged to the Guelph party, and opposed the Imperialists whenever they could consistently with their political principles. Alexis grew up in the practice of the most profound humility. He joined the Laudesi, a pious confraternity of the Blessed Virgin, and there met the six future companions of his life of sanctity. He was favoured with an apparition of the Mother of God, 15 August, 1233, as were these companions. The seven soon afterwards founded the Order of the Servites. With consistent loyalty and heroism Alexis at once abandoned all, and retired to La Camarzia, a house on the outskirts of the town, and the following year to Mt. Senario. With characteristic humility, he traversed, as a mendicant, in quest of alms for his brethren, the streets of the city through which he had lately moved as a prominent citizen. So deep and sincere was his humility that, though he lived to the great age of hundred and ten years, he always refused to enter the priesthood, of which he deemed himself unworthy. The duties of our Saint were confined principally to the material needs of the various communities in which he lived. In 1252 the new church at Cafaggio, on the outskirts of Florence, was completed under his care, with the financial assistance of Chiarissimo Falconieri. The miraculous image of the Annunciation, still highly venerated in Italy, had its origin here. St. Juliana Falconieri, his niece, was trained in sanctity under his personal direction. The influence exerted on his countrymen by Alexis and his companions may be gathered from the fact that in a few years ten thousand persons had enrolled themselves under the banner of the Blessed Virgin in the Servite Order. At his death he was visited by the Infant Jesus in visible form, as was attested by eye-witnesses. His body rests near the church of the Annunciation, in Florence. Clement XI declared Alexis worthy of the veneration of the faithful, 1 December, 1717, and accorded the same honour to his six companions, 3 July 1725.
Annal. Ord. Serv. B. M. Virg. (Florence, 1729); Ledoux, Hist. of the Seven Holy Founders (London, 1889); Acta SS. Feb. 17 (Paris, 1880).
Alexius, Saint and Confessor.—According to the most recent researches he was an Eastern saint whose veneration was transplanted from the Byzantine empire to Rome, whence it spread rapidly throughout western Christendom. Together with the name and veneration of the Saint, his legend was made known to Rome and the West by means of Latin versions and recensions based on the form current in the Byzantine Orient. This process was facilitated by the fact that according to the earlier Syriac legend of the Saint, the "Man of God," of Edessa (identical with St. Alexius) was a native of Rome. The Greek legend, which antedates the ninth century and is the basis of all later versions, makes Alexius the son of a distinguished Roman named Euphemianus. The night of his marriage he secretly left his father's house and journeyed to Edessa in the Syrian Orient where, for seventeen years, he led the life of a pious ascetic. As the fame of his sanctity grew, he left Edessa and returned to Rome, where, for seventeen years, he dwelt as a beggar under the stairs of his father's palace, unknown to his father or wife. After his death, assigned to the year 417, a document was found on his body, in which he revealed his identity. He was forthwith honoured as a saint and his father's house was converted into a church placed under the patronage of Alexius. In this expanded form the legend is
