ABBADIE, ANTOINE D'

ABBADIE, ANTOINE d'. - Explorer, geographer, astronomer, born in Dublin, to a family of French émigrés, on 9 January 1810, and died in Paris on 19 March 1897. Having returned to Toulouse, he prepared for exploratory journeys in Africa together with his brother Arnaud, five years his junior, who preceded him to Cairo (1838), while he himself went to Brazil on a state commission. Having subsequently joined his brother, he met the Lazarist missionary G. Sapeto (v.) at Massaua and began (1840) the great geodetic and cartographic survey of Ethiopia. Like his brother—who became a ras—he made himself beloved by the natives as no other among travellers had done—the Massaua (v.) attests—and through his unremitting labours and irreproachable morals he was regarded as a monk or priest. Having advanced as far as Kaffa, he wrote a letter to the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in which, after describing the conditions of the Galla, he called for the foundation of a Catholic mission, which Gregory XVI promptly established, creating a vicariate and entrusting it to Monsignor Massaua. The Pope, who had already made him a Knight of St Gregory, sent him a warm expression of thanks. Having returned to France (1848), the brothers d'A. continued their scientific studies and journeys. Arnaud published the first volume of Douze ans dans la Haute-Ethiopie ou Abyssinie (1868), and Antoine the classic work Géographie d'Ethiopie. Ce que j'ai entendu faisant suite à ce que j'ai vu (1890).

Egilberto Martire