BENOIST, MICHEL. – French Jesuit and missionary, born at Dijon (or at Autun) on 8 October 1715, died at Peking on 23 October 1774. Having entered the novitiate at Nancy in 1737, he arrived in China in 1744 and was almost immediately summoned to Peking to join the small group of mathematical missionaries at court, whose function was to maintain imperial goodwill toward the mission through the practice of Western sciences and arts.
He had prepared himself through studies of astronomy in Paris, but was unable to distinguish himself in this field, because the emperor Kien-lung occupied him for many years with embellishing the imperial parks through the magnificence of hydraulic art—waterfalls, fountains, and the like—in the style of Versailles; he then commissioned him to construct Western-style pavilions in the famous summer residence (the Yuan-ming-yuan, destroyed in 1860).
B. also took part in cartographic work, including, among other things, the production of the new map of the empire in 104 sheets, for which he reintroduced copperplate engraving into China, with considerable success. He then played a leading role in the negotiations for the engraving in Paris, on behalf of Kien-lung, of the celebrated series of plates Les conquêtes de l'empereur de la Chine, based on drawings by the missionaries in Peking, and subsequently had to produce further printings in Peking. Superior of the Peking residence during a very difficult period, from 1762 to 1772, B. succumbed upon hearing of the suppression of the Society of Jesus.