BASILIO of SAN FRANCESCO. — Discalced Carmelite (in secular life FRANCESCO de Quintal), missionary; b. in 1595 at Santarém (Portugal) and professed at Montecompatri (Rome) in 1618. He founded (1623) the convent of Basra, an outpost of the Carmelite mission in the East. He was the first to seriously concern himself with the Mandaeans (the so-called Christians of St. John the Baptist), securing the transfer of many to Portuguese colonies to save them from extermination by the Turkish government. Sent as vicar to Mount Carmel (1654), he died there on 19 Dec. of the same year. Besides numerous letters, he left a report on the beginning of the Basra mission (1623–36), published in the periodical Études Carm., vols. 12–14.
BIBL.: A Chronicle of Carmelites in Persia, II, London 1939, 814–17, 1124–36; Ambrosius a S. Teresia, Nomenclator Mission. Carm. Disc., pp. 64–65. Ambrogio di Santa Teresa