BARTHOLOMEW of Bologna, Blessed. - A Dominican, probably Italian, commonly but incorrectly called B. of Bologna, while the oldest documents refer to him as B. de Podio (of or from Poggio?). A missionary in the East, he was promoted suffragan bishop to the archbishop of Sultanieh in Persia (10 May 1318) without being assigned any diocese. He settled near the Dominican mission at Maragah in Azerbaijan. In 1328 he converted the vaitapet (doctor) John, superior of an Armenian monastery at Qīnay (Cherna) near Nachicevan, and with him founded the Armenian-Dominican congregation of the Unitor friars and the Armenian-Catholic community of Nachicevan. He died, according to tradition, on 15 August 1333, and was buried at Qīnay. Public veneration of him is attested by documents dating from about 1404 to 1750. A collection of his sermons, translated from Persian into Armenian, survives. Some called him B. parvus or B. the Little due to an erroneous identification with a Dominican theologian named Bartholomew Parvus, while others confused him with Bartholomew of Siena, a Dominican missionary and bishop of Tabriz.
BARTOLOMEO DA BOLOGNA, BEATO
BIBL.: M. A. van den Oudenrijn, Adnotat. bibliogr. armeno-domenicano, Rome 1921, pp. 6-9, 19-21; R. Loenertz, La Societas Fratrum Peregrinantium, I, Rome 1937 (cf. index); A. Kern, Der Libellus de Notitia orbis, Johannes III. O. P. Erzbischof von Sultanyeh, in Arch. FF. Praedicatorum, 8 (1938), pp. 114-116; R. Loenertz, Évêques dominicains des deux Arménies, ibid., 10 (1940), pp. 280-281.