DAPRÀ, AGAPITO. - Franciscan Orientalist, b. 22 May 1653 at Tesero (Val di Fiemme, Trent), d. in November 1687 at Padua. In 1680 he was in Rome at the missionary college of S. Pietro in Montoro to study Arabic. It is not known whether he ever served as a missionary in Egypt.
Professor of Arabic at the episcopal seminary of Padua from 1682 until his death, he published an Arabic grammar, Flores grammaticales arabici idiomatis... (Padua 1687), which, being very useful to missionaries, was reprinted by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Part 2, of 70 pp., contains Rudimenta grammaticale Persicae.
BIBL.: P. L. Rosat, in Contributi alla storia dei frati Minori della provincia di Trento, Trento 1926, pp. 258 ff.; A. Klienhans, Historia studii linguae Arabicae..., Quaracchi 1930, pp. 206-208.