Career
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. He visited Holland and England in 1707, preached before Queen Anne, and, it is said, was invited to become one of her chaplains. He was the author of many works, chiefly on church history.
In search of materials he visited Helmstedt in 1712, and Leipzig in 1715 and 1725. He died at Berlin on 7 August 1728. An exhaustive catalogue of his publications, thirty-two in all, will be found in J. G. de Chauffepié's Dictionnaire.
See also Eugène and Émile Haags' La France Protestante. He is now best known by his Histoire du Concile de Constance (Amsterdam, 1714. 2nd ed, 1728; English trans, 1730).
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.
