A Reformed theologian somewhat neglected by critical historiography, in his own time Jacques Lenfant was most renowned for the church historical works he published during the first decades of the eighteenth century. However, as a young man he was also active as a translator, notably producing translations of Malebranche’s La Recherche de la vérité (1683), a selection of letters from saint Cyprian (1688), as well as Friedrich Spanheim’s De Papa foemina (1693). Based on an analysis of the translator’s prefaces, this study seeks to expose the ideological project underlying these literary works and to identify the decisive stages in Lenfant’s intellectual development.