Fitch came upon Robert Persons's The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to Resolution,[4] an important devotional work of the time, and decided to convert to Catholicism, then illegal in England.
A letter of approbation printed at the beginning of The Rule of Perfection is signed by a number of doctors of the Sorbonne, including André Duval,[3] who introduced it to Vincent de Paul.
[7] Benet brought out official editions of the first two parts of his work, but unfortunately not of the third, because he sensed stirrings of criticism from orthodox theologians about the boldness of his teachings on the higher levels of prayer.
As a result, this third part is known only in its French and Italian translations, in which Benet had incorporated more conventional devotional elements to ensure its acceptability as an ascetical handbook.
In 1941 Aldous Huxley published his book Grey Eminence which focusses on François Leclerc du Tremblay upon whom Canfield was a major influence.