Bartholomites

BARTHOLOMITES: 1. A society founded at Genoa in 1307 by certain Armenian Basilian monks who had fled thither from persecution in their native land. They built there a church to the Virgin and St. Bartholomew, whence their name. Pope Clement V (1305-14) allowed them to follow their Eastern rite and customs, but in course of time they conformed to Western usages, and in 1356 Innocent VI allowed them to choose a general. They existed at Genoa and in other places in Italy till 1650, when Innocent X suppressed the order.

2. A congregation of secular priests founded at Salzburg about 1643 by Bartholomäus Holzhauser, canon of Salzburg (b. at Langenau, near Ulm, 1613; d. at Bingen May 20, 1658). Their statutes, confirmed by Innocent XI in 1680 (complete text in Holstenius-Brockie, Codex regularum, vi, Augsburg, 1759, 543-595), regulated their life on communistic principles, whence their official name, Institutum clericorum sæcularium in communi viventium, and their popular designation as “Communists.” For a time the society flourished in the dioceses of South Germany as well as in Hungary, Poland, and Spain, but with the suppression of their last house, at Landshut, in 1804, they went out of existence.

O. Zöckler†.

Bibliography: 1. Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, i, 48. 2. Helyot, Ordres monastiques, viii (1719), 119-126; Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, ii, 363-366; J. P. L. Gaduel, Vie du . . . Barthélemy Holzhauser, Orléans, 1892 (contains also a study of the order).