RAPIN, RENÉ. - Jesuit, humanist, and theologian, b. at Tours on 3 Nov. 1621, d. at Paris on 27 Oct. 1687.
Having entered the Order in 1639, he taught belles-lettres for nine years; then he devoted himself entirely to a literary career. A skilled Latin poet and prose writer, he earned fame as a new Theocritus with his *Elegie sacre* (Paris 1659), and especially with *Hortorum libri IV* (ibid. 1663). His courtly Latin compositions, his elegiac verses on the death of illustrious figures, his triumphal odes in honour of Mazarin and Louis XIV, and the *Odorarium liber* addressed to Clement IX remained celebrated and much sought after. Notable was his caustic wit in the *querelle des anciens et des modernes* against Frs. F. Vavasseur and P. Mambrun, taking the side of the ancients. More valuable and effective, for their refined scholarship and mastery of subject, were his comparative studies in literary criticism between Virgil and Horace, Homer and Virgil, Cicero and Demosthenes, Thucydides and Livy, Plato, Aristotle, and the Fathers.
He also left various ascetical and theological works, among them: *L’esprit du christianisme* (Paris 1672), *La perfection du christianisme, tirée de la morale de Jésus-Christ* (ibid. 1673); but still indispensable for their abundance of information and data are two posthumous works: *Histoire du jansénisme depuis ses origines jusqu’en 1644* (ed. by Abbot Domenech [Paris 1861], though he issued a mutilated text riddled with errors and unrecognizable names) and *Mémoires sur l’Église et la société, la cour, la ville et le jansénisme* (ed. by L. Aubineau, 3 vols., ibid. 1865).