BARSECH, BASILIO. – An Armenian priest of Constantinople, d. in Rome in 1693 and buried in S. Maria Egiziana, then the hospice for Armenians. He was entrusted with the task of revising a new Armenian Bible printed in Amsterdam by the Armenian Oskan and confiscated by the Inquisition in Livorno.
B. corrected the Missal, the Hymnal, and the Breviary, but with little success, due to his incompetence and especially his Latinizing mentality. The Sacred Congregation of Propaganda abolished in 1897 the corrections and innovations he had introduced.
B.’s work was the subject of very lively criticism even from 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 Akelian