BARTOLOMITI. — An order of Armenian monks who, having fled to Italy from the regions of Armenia-Cilicia already threatened by the infidels, settled in Genoa in 1307 under the leadership of the monk Martiros. With the favor of Pope Clement V, in the following year they built a first convent and a church dedicated to S. Bartolomeo, apostle of the Armenians, which gave them their name. These monks, called Basilians in Clement V’s bull and commonly “Armenian Friars” (although, after 1350, they were all Italians), followed the rules and wore the habit of the Dominicans, and had adopted the Latin rite, suppressing the Armenian one.
The Order of the B. enjoyed considerable development and a good reputation as long as it was governed by a permanent superior general; but when the office became six-yearly, disagreements and disorders arose that led to its total suppression in 1650. The church was given to the Barnabites.
Their first seminary was that of Salzburg, followed by the foundation of many others. The Congregation flourished greatly for more than a century, especially under the superior general Johann Appelian (d. in Rome in 1700), who had the constitutions definitively approved by Pope Innocent XI (they had already been approved in 1647, during the founder’s lifetime). Innocent XI wished them to have a house in Rome itself, where, however, the institute did not achieve the success obtained elsewhere, and the establishment founded there had a brief existence. The B. exerted a notable influence on the formation of the clergy in Germany, particularly in the southern regions, in Austria, in Bohemia, and more generally throughout Europe; they also spread to South America. Around the middle of the eighteenth century the Congregation fell into decline, and began a difficult existence that led to its suppression, carried out by the Bavarian government in 1801, also as a result of the persecutory mania of the period.
The principal constitutional and disciplinary characteristics of the B. may be summarized as follows: they had no vows, but bound themselves by oath not to leave the Congregation, to live in common, and to hold goods in common; ecclesiastical revenues were removed from individual ownership, which led to the B. being called «communists»; each house was governed by a local superior, several houses were headed by a dean, and a diocesan superior was placed over all the houses in the same diocese; above them all stood a superior general.
The «Unione (v.) apostolica», founded in 1862 by Vittore Lebeurier, may currently be regarded as a partial heir to the aims of the B.; among other things, it seeks to introduce the process for the canonization of B. Holzhauser.