René Rapin

His first production, Eclogæ Sacræ (Paris, 1659), won him the title of the Second Theocritus, and his poem on gardens, Hortorum libri IV (Paris, 1665), twice translated into English (London, 1673; Cambridge, 1706), placed him among the foremost Latin versifiers.

These books and many other pamphlets were collected in Oeuvres complétes published at Amsterdam, 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.