Benet Canfield, also known as Father Benet, Benoit of Canfield, or Benoît de Canfeld, (1562–1610), was an English Recusant and mystic. His Rule of Perfection served as a manual two or three generations of mystics. For his influence on Madame Acarie, Pierre de Bérulle, André Duval, and Vincent de Paul he has been called the "Masters of masters".
Benet was born William Fitch at Little Canfield in Essex, the third of four sons of his father's second marriage. Around 1579 he began studies in London, at New Inn, one of the eight Inns of Chancery, and then at Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. A discussion with a Dissenter convinced him that all Reformed theology was flawed (including that of his own Anglican Church).
Fitch came upon Robert Persons's "The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to Resolution", an important devotional work of the time, and decided to convert to Catholicism, then illegal in England. He went to study at the English Catholic college at Douai in Belgium, a major centre for English Recusants, or Catholics in exile, during the Elizabethan period. He entered the Capuchin order as a Friar in 1587 and was given the religious name of Benoît de Canfeld, "Benoît" the French form of Benedict, but in English he used the older form, Benet.
Completing his theological studies in Italy, he returned to Britain around 1599 and was immediately imprisoned, where he wrote his theological allegory, Le chevalier Chrestien. He was banished to France on an appeal by Henry IV of France in the spring of 1603. He became Master of Novices at Rouen in 1608, and was well known in the French Court. Benet was a teacher of Pierre de Bérulle, founder of the French school of spirituality, and of many interested in the spiritual renewal of France. Benet died in Paris on 21 November 1610.