Élie Benoist (20 January 1640 – 15 November 1728), was a French Protestant minister, known as an historian of the Edict of Nantes. Benoist was born in Paris to parents who were servants of the Protestant family of La Trémoille. He displayed an early fondness for the classics, and supported himself tutoring in divinity while he studied at Montaigu College and at the Collège de La Marche (in the University of Paris) after the Huguenot college at Montauban was disbanded on protest from the Jesuits.