Ranee, Armand Jean le Bouthillier de, the well-known founder of the reformed order of La Trappe, was born Jan. 9, 1626, at Paris, where he was educated. Having taken his degree in the Sorbonne with great applause, and embraced the 'ecclesiastical profession, he soon became distinguished as a preacher, and through the favor of cardinal Richelieu obtained more than one valuable benefice. He possessed as a young man a large fortune, and, notwithstanding his clerical character, was carried away by the gayety and dissipation of Parisian life. After a time, however, having embraced the cause of cardinal Retz, he displeased and finally forfeited the favor of cardinal Mazarin ; and being deeply moved by the death of a lady, the duchess de Montbazon, to whom he was much attached, he withdrew altogether from Paris, resolved to distribute all his property among the poor, and to devote himself exclusively to the practice of piety and penitential works. Finally, he resigned all his preferments (of which, by the abusive practice of the period, he held several simultaneously) with the ex- ception of the abbacy of La Trappe, to which convent he retired in 1G62, with the intention of restoring the strict discipline of the order. The history of the reforms which he effected will be found under the head Trap- pists. He lived in this seclusion for thirty-three years, during which he published a large number of works, chiefly ascetical. He died Oct. 27, 1700. The only re- markable events of his literary life are his controversy with Mabillon, in reply to his Etudes Monastiques, on the subject of the studies proper for the monastic life, which is entitled Traite de la Saintete des Devoirs <l<: VEtat Monastique, and his controversy with Arnauld, which drew upon Ranee the hatred of the Jansenists. Ranee's works are numerous. In his youth he edited Anacreon in one volume, octavo (Paris, 1639), with a dedication to cardinal Richelieu. His most notewor- thy publications of his religious life, aside from those referred to, are, Explication sur la Regie de St.-Benoit (Paris, 1G89, 2 vols. 4to) : — Abrege des Obligations des Chretiens: — Reflexions Morales sur les Quatres Evange- listes (Paris, 1699, 12mo) : — Conferences (on the same ; 1699): — Relation de la Vie et de la Mort de Quelques Religieux de la Trappe (1696, 4 vols. 12mo), and other works on monastic life and its reforms, etc. See Tille- mont, Vie de Ranee (1719, 2 vols. 12mo) ; Marsollier, Vie (1703); Chateaubriand, Vie; Moreri, Diet. Hist. s.v. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generate, s. v. ; Chambers's Ency- clop. s. v.
Ranconnier, Jacques, a French Jesuit missiona- ry, was born in 1 (500 in the county of Bourgogne, en- tered the novitiate of the Jesuits at the age of nineteen in Malines, and in 1625 went into the missionary work
in Paraguay. He labored very successfully for seven years among the Itatines, whom he converted to Chris- tianity, such as he had to offer, and died among this new people of the Gospel about 1640. He wrote frequent reports of the progress of his work in Paraguay, which are valuable contributions to the history of that South American country. See Sothwell, Bibl. Script. Soc. Jesu, p. 209 ; Charlevoix, Hist, de Paraguay, liv. viii. — Hoefer, Now. Biog. Generate, s.v. See also Paraguay.
Rand, Asa, an American Congregational divine, born at Rindge, N. H., Aug. 6, 1783, was educated at Dickinson College, where he took his degree in 1806, studied for the ministry, and was ordained at Gorham, Me., Jan. 18, 1809, as pastor of a Congregational Church. In 1822 he undertook the editorial care of the Christian Mirror at Portland, Me., and held this until 1825, when he took the principalship of a female seminary at Brook- field. In July, 1826, he accepted the editorship of the Boston Recorder, the Youth's Companion, and the Vol- unteer, the last a religious monthly. His health, which had for some time been failing, and had originally forced him from the ministry, finally compelled him also to leave the editorial chair, and he connected himself with a book-store and printing-office at. Lowell, Mass. He finally went back to editorial work, and started the Loicell Observer, a weekly paper. In 1835 he again be- gan to preach and address public audiences. He took up the slavery question and spoke in behalf of abolition in Maine and Massachusetts. From 1837 to 1842 he preached in Pompey. N. Y., then became pastor of the Presbyterian church in Peterborough, N. Y., the home of the celebrated abolitionist Gerritt Smith. His last years Mr. Rand spent at Ashburnham, Mass., where he died Aug. 24, 1871. He was, while at Gorham, a fre- quent writer for the religious quarterly published at Portland for 1814-18, and, besides occasional sermons, put in print a volume of Familiar Sermons: — a Review of Finney's Sermons: — New Divinity Theology, a vindi- cation of the same: — and a Letter to Dr. Lyman Beecher. See Sprague, Annals of the A mer. Pulpit, vol. i.
Rand, William, an American divine of colonial times, flourished in the first half of the 18th century. He was a student at Harvard University, class of 1721, then took holy orders, and became pastor at Sunder- land, Mass., of a Congregational Church. In 1746 he removed, in the same capacity, to Kingston, N. Y., and died there in 1779. He published five separate ser- mons (1739-1757). See Sprague, Annuls of the Amer. Pulpit, i, 386.