Jean Benedicti

A Franciscan theologian of the sixteenth century belonging to the Observantine Province of Tours and Poitiers. He became in time secretary of the order and in this capacity accompanied the minister-general, Christopher a Capite Fontium, throughout the whole of Europe in the latter's canonical visitation of Franciscan houses. Afterwards he was made comissary-general of the French and visitor of many Italian Provinces, and in order to fulfill a vow went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Wadding says that he was a man of most distinguished parts and great culture, having thoroughly mastered the learning of his day and being especially conversant with the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues. In 1599 the first edition of his "Somme des péchés et le remède d'iceux comprenant tous les cas de conscience" was published in Paris and was immediately in great demand among confessors, for we learn that after having been revised, corrected, and augmented by the Theological Faculty of Paris it reached its fifteenth edition. He also wrote "La triomphante victoire de la Sainte Vierge" which tells of a remarkable exorcism in the church of the Cordeliers at Lyons. His remains were interred in the Friary at Laval.

WADDING, Annales minor. ad ann., 1596, IV; SBARALEA, supp. ad script. O.M. (Rome, 1806).

Andrew Egan.