BOUTHILLER de RANCÉ, ARMAND-JEAN le. — Cistercian, founder of the Trappists. Born in Paris into a noble family on 9 January 1626; died at La Trappe (county of Perche) on 27 October 1700. At the age of eleven, in order to succeed to the rich benefices left vacant by his brother’s death, he received the Cistercian monastery of La Trappe in commendam. He nevertheless led a worldly life, while distinguishing himself from his earliest youth by his love of letters, especially Greek (at the age of thirteen, in 1639, he published an edition of Anacreon with a critical commentary), and by his eloquence, of which he gave excellent proof at the Assembly of the Clergy in 1655. His conversion began in 1657, about which much was said and written (D. de Larroque, Véritables motifs de la conversion de l'abbé de La Trappe, Cologne 1685; N. Barthe, Lettre de l'abbé de Rancé à un ami, Geneva 1765; and the verse response by J. F. de Laharpe, Réponse, Paris 1802). Having disposed of all his possessions, he retained only the abbey of La Trappe, where he became regular abbot, after two years of arduous novitiate, on 13 July 1664. He then began his constant and fierce struggle to obtain the reform of the Cistercian Order. His controversy with the Maurist monks concerning monastic studies is famous in this connection: B. considered such studies alien to the spirit of Benedictine monasticism, insisting instead on manual labor. Having failed to obtain from the cardinal congregation, which was to decide between the “strict” and the “common” observance in religious Orders, the brief favorable to the “strict observance,” he withdrew to La Trappe (1667) and dictated to his monks the new regulations intended to restore the Benedictine Rule in all its primitive observance. On 23 May 1678 he obtained the Pope’s approval and commendation, and his reform received official recognition from Clement XI (19 September 1705). At present the Order of the Trappists numbers more than 80 monasteries.
He wrote various works on monastic life, and commentaries on the Rule of St. Benedict and on the Gospels. Since he did not fail to concern himself with all the religious and literary questions of his time, he corresponded with the most representative figures; his Lettres, collected and published by P. Gouod (Paris 1845), are therefore extremely interesting.