At an early age he entered the Augustinian Order and became a well-known preacher, being heard for over half a century in most of the great pulpits of France.
His singularity consisted in a habit of interspersing his sermons with a few droll expressions, in order, as he said, to keep his hearers awake.
Boileau refers to Boulanger when, speaking of trivial plays on words and witticisms, he writes:
Tallemant des Réaux said: "He was a good member of his order and had a large following of all sorts of people; some came to laugh, others came because he moved them."
The critic Guéret, who had head the facetious monk, represents him, in a dialogue of the dead, as saying in his own defence against his accuser Cardinal du Perron: "Joker as you take him to be, he has not always made those laugh who heard him; he has said truths which have sent bishops back into their dioceses.