DAPRÀ, AGAPITO. – Franciscan Orientalist, born on 22 May 1653 at Tesoro (Val di Fiemme, Trento), died in November 1687 at Padua. In 1680 he was in Rome at the missionary college of S. Pietro in Montorio to learn 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, because it was very useful to missionaries, was reprinted by Propaganda. Part 2, comprising 70 pages, contains Rudimenta grammaticae Persicae.
BIBL.: P. L. Rosat, in Contributi alla storia dei frati Minori della provincia di Trento, Trento 1926, p. 258 ff.; A. Klein-hans, Historia studii linguae Arabicae..., Quaracchi 1930, pp. 206–208. Bonaventura Mariani