René Rapin (1621–1687) was a French

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

and writer. He was born at

Tours Tours ( ; ) is the largest city in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabita ...

and entered the

Society of Jesus The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...

in 1639. He taught

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

, and wrote extensively both in verse and prose.

Works

His first production, ''Eclogæ Sacræ'' (Paris, 1659), won him the title of the Second

Theocritus Theocritus (; , ''Theokritos''; ; born 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings ...

, and his poem on gardens, ''Hortorum libri IV'' (Paris, 1665), twice translated into English (London, 1673;

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, 1706), placed him among the foremost Latin versifiers. Of his critical essays, the best known are: ''Observations sur les poèmes d'Homère et de Virgile'' (Paris, 1669); ''Réflexions sur l'usage de l'éloquence de ce temps'' (Paris, 1672); ''Réflexions sur la poétique d'Aristote et sur les ouvrages des poétes anciens et modernes'' (Paris, 1674). He is also the author of several theological and ascetic treatises like ''De nova doctrina dissertatio seu Evangelium Jansenistarum'' (Paris, 1656); ''L'esprit du christianisme'' (Paris, 1672); ''La perfection du christianisme'' (Paris, 1673); ''La foi des derniers siècles'' (Paris, 1679). These books and many other pamphlets were collected in ''Oeuvres complétes'' published at

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, 1709–10. Rapin's best titles to celebrity are his two posthumous works: ''Histoire du jansenisme'', edited by Domenech (Paris, 1861), and ''Mémoires sur l'église, la société, la cour, la ville et le jansénisme'', edited by Aubineau (Paris, 1865). The latter book is the counterpart of the Jansenistic ''Mémoires de Godefroi Hermant sur l'histoire ecclésiastique du XVIIe siècle'', edited by Gazier (Paris, 1905). Ste-Beuve in his own ''Port Royal'' tries on every occasion to find Rapin at fault, but more recent studies on Jansenism show that he is, in the main, reliable.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rapin, Rene French religious writers 1621 births 1687 deaths Clergy from Tours, France French literary critics French essayists 17th-century French Jesuits French male essayists Lycée Louis-le-Grand teachers Writers from Tours, France