BARTOLOMITI. – An order of Armenian monks who fled to Italy from the regions of Armenian-Cilicia, already threatened by the infidels, and established in Genoa in 1307 under the leadership of the monk Martiros. With the favour of Pope Clement V, in the following year they built a first convent and a church dedicated to St Bartholomew, apostle of the Armenians, which gave them their name. These monks, called Basilians in the bull of Clement V, and commonly “Armenian Friars” (though 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 a fair development and good reputation as long as it was governed by a perpetual superior general; but when the office became six-yearly, dissensions and disorders arose that led to its total suppression in 1650. The church was given to the Barnabites.
Ella Pecikian
BARTOLOMITI. – A congregation of secular priests founded in 1640 under the title Institutum clericorum sacerdotum HOLZHAUSER, BARTHOLOMÄUS (v.). The founder’s primary aim was to provide effective assistance to dioceses and priests following the damage caused by the Thirty Years’ War. The B. mainly devoted themselves to the formation of young seminarians.
Their first seminary was that of Salzburg, followed by the foundation of many others. The Congregation flourished for over a century, especially under the superior general Johann Appelius (d. in Rome in 1700), who had the constitutions definitively approved by Pope Innocent XI (already approved in 1647 during the founder’s lifetime). Innocent XI wished to have a house of theirs in Rome itself, where, however, the institute did not achieve the same success as elsewhere, and the founding seat had a short duration. The B. exerted considerable influence on the formation of the clergy in Germany, particularly in the southern regions, in Austria, in Bohemia and in various parts of Europe; they also spread to South America. By the mid-1700s the Congregation was in decline, and a difficult existence began that led to its suppression, which occurred, also due to the persecutory mania of the time, by decree of the Bavarian government in 1804.
The main constitutional and disciplinary features of the B. can be summarised as follows: they did not take vows, but bound themselves by oath not to leave the Congregation, to live in common and to share goods; ecclesiastical revenues were excluded from individual ownership, which earned the B. the name of “communists”; each house was governed by a local superior, several houses were under the authority of a dean, and a diocesan superior presided over all the houses in the same diocese; above all was a superior general.
The present-day partial heir to the aims of the B. can be considered the “Apostolic Union” (v.) founded in 1862 by Victor Lebeurier; among its objectives is also the introduction of the canonisation process of B. Holzhauser.