BREVEDENT, CHARLES-FRANÇOIS de. - A French missionary, born at Genneville (Calvados) in 1659, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1674 and departed for the mission in Syria in 1692. He first worked in Armenia; in 1697 he went to Cairo as one of those chosen to attempt penetration into Ethiopia. He began his journey in 1698, disguised and under the name of Giuseppe Duval, as a companion to the French physician Charles Poncet, sent to the court of Emperor IASÙ; but he died in July 1699, shortly before reaching Gondar.
BIBL.: Three letters by the B. are published by C. Beccari, Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores occidentales inediti, XIV, Rome 1914, pp. 17-18, 59-66, 70-72, with the documentation relating to the journey (pp. 1-15). Another letter had already been published in the Mercure Galant of November 1698. Cf. Sommervogel, I, col. 147; VIII, col. 1927.