Raguenet embraced the ecclesiastical state, and became preceptor of Marie Anne Mancini, cardinal de Bouillon's niece.
This position, leaving him the leisure to cultivate his taste for letters, he distinguished himself in the competitions of the Académie française and obtained, in 1685, an accessit[1] by a discourse on the subject, De la patience et du vice qui lui est contraire ("On patience and the vice that is contrary to it").
Two years later, he won the prize in a speech entitled Sur le mérite et l’utilité du martyre ("On the merit and use of martyrdom").
In 1698, abbott Raguenet followed Cardinal de Bouillon at Rome and for two years studied the masterpieces of the arts which decorate the palaces and churches of the capital of the Christian world.
The description he gave of it, shortly after his return to Paris, earned him the "letters from the Roman citizen",[2] a title which flattered him greatly, and which he afterwards added to his name.