BENET (BONET), JUAN BAUTISTA. – Catalan Carmelite, ascetical and pedagogical writer of the 17th century. Originally from Olot (diocese of Gerona), he was definitor of the Catalan province and perpetual commissary of the Carmelite Third Order (1666, confirmed in 1693). He died ca. 1698.
He published: Jardin del Carmelo (Barcelona 1660); Espejo de vida y exercicios de virtud (there 1664); Las elegancias de Paulo Manuccio (there 1645), an interesting Catalan popularization of P. Manuzio’s work, based on the Castilian translations by Lorenzo Palmireno (1573) and Hernando Álvarez (1616).
BIBL.: F. Torres y Amat, Dictionn. de escritores catalanes, Barcelona 1856, pp. 102-18; J. Coignet, s. V. in DHG, VII, cols. 1278-79; Acta Capit. Gen. Ord. Carm., II, Rome 1934, pp. 125, 239, 257. Ambrogio di Santa Teresa