BRÉVEDENT, CHARLES-FRANÇOIS de. – French missionary, born at Genneville (Calvados) in 1659, entered the Society of Jesus in 1674, and departed in 1692 for the mission in Syria. He first worked in Armenia; in 1697 he came to Cairo, having been included among those who were to attempt the penetration of Ethiopia. He began the journey in 1698, disguised and under the name of Giuseppe Duval, as companion to the French physician Carlo Poncet, sent to the court of Emperor Iâsû; but he died in July 1699, shortly before reaching Gondar.
BIBL.: Three letters of B. are published by C. Beccari, Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores occidentales inediti, XIV, Rome 1914, pp. 17–18, 59–66, 70–72, together with the documentation relating to the journey (pp. 1–150). Another letter had already been published in the Mercure Galant of November 1698. Cf. Sommervogel, I, col. 147; VIII, col. 1927. Edmondo Lamalle