BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE, a mediaeval semi-monastic order founded by Gerard Groot of Deventer (1340 84), a deacon, as an intermediate stage between monasticism, which he considered the highest life, and the life of the people. He established at Deventer and elsewhere communities where in men, or in some cases women, might live together piously and perform good works. These brotherhoods and sisterhoods had no formal vows but, like strictly monastic com munities, lived without private property and devoted themselves to the care of the poor and sick, to the copying of books and to teaching. They wore special black and gray garments, and lived according to a strict discipline. At first they met with strong opposition on the part of the established monastic orders. They seem to have held no peculiar doctrines, except in so far as they maintained that translations of the Bible should be put into the hands of laymen. Their educational labors were not
carried on by special schools founded by the order, and the schools in which they taught in time fell into the hands of the Jesuits. The order founded several reformed monasteries, among which were the Augustinian foundation at Windesheim and that at Mount Agnes, near Zwolle, where Thomas a Kempis (q.v.) was a monk. During the Reformation some Brother-houses, such as that at Wesel, went over to Lutheranism. Consult Cruise, Sir Francis, (Thomas a Kempis: a Visit to the Scenes in which His Life Was Spent) (Lon don 1887); Gem, S. H., Saints: the Brethren of the Common Life) (London 1907); Grube, K., (Groot and seine Stiftungen> (Co logne 1883); Kettlewell, a Kempis and the Brethren of the Common Life) (Lon don 1885).