in a monastic sense, are lay-friars, or brothers, admitted for the service of the house; without orders, and not allowed to sing in the choir. Till the eleventh century, the word was used for persons who embraced the monkish life at the age of discretion; by which they were distinguished from those devoted in their childhood by their parents, called oblati. But in the eleventh century, when they began to receive into monasteries illiterate persons, incapable of being clerks, and only destined for bodily labour, the signification of the word was necessarily changed. F. Mabillon observes, that it was John first abbot of Vallombrosa who first introduced these brother converts, distinguished by their state from the monks of the choir, who were then either clerks or capable of becoming so.