BARSECH, BASILIO. – Constantinopolitan Armenian priest, who died in Rome in 1693 and was buried in S. Maria Egiziaca, then a hospice for Armenians. He was entrusted with revising a new Armenian Bible printed in Amsterdam by the Armenian Oskan and seized by the Inquisition at Livorno.
B. corrected the Missal, the hymnal and the Breviary, but with an unsuccessful result, owing to his incompetence and especially to his Latinizing mentality. The S. Congregation of Propaganda abolished in 1897 the corrections and innovations introduced by him.
B.’s work was also the object of very vigorous criticism on the part of learned Armenian ecclesiastics.
BIBL.: Codex Borgianus latinus, 144, ff. 25, 112, 113, 166 ff.; C. Korolevsky, s. V. in DHG, VI, cols. 951–54. Serafino Aleliani