Jacques Lenfant

[1][2] After studying at Saumur and Geneva, Lenfant completed his theological course at Heidelberg, where in 1684 he was ordained minister of the French Protestant church, and appointed chaplain to the dowager electress palatine.

When the French invaded the Electorate of the Palatinate in 1688 Lenfant withdrew to Berlin, as in a recent book he had vigorously attacked the Jesuits.

Here in 1689 he was again appointed one of the ministers of the French Protestant church; this office he continued to hold until his death, ultimately adding to it that of chaplain to the king, with the dignity of Consistorialrath.

It is of course largely dependent upon the laborious work of Hermann von der Hardt (1660-1746), but has literary merits peculiar to itself, and has been praised on all sides for its fairness.

Lenfant was one of the chief promoters of the Bibliothèque Germanique, begun in 1720; and he was associated with Isaac de Beausobre (1659-1738) in the preparation of the new French translation of the New Testament with original notes, published at Amsterdam in 1718.