This handbook presents for the first time a comprehensive dictionary of names and concepts from the culture of letters in the Early Modern Age. It consists of a bio-bibliographical repertoire (Vol. I) of the most significant authors between the 15th and 18th centuries (from Thomas Abbt to Zwingli) and a glossary (still in preparation) (Vol. II) with concise articles on central concepts of learned culture in Early Modern Times, e.g. ars conversandi, disputatio, theologia naturalis , zwinglianism etc. Learned culture or the culture of letters is understood as an area of life and society in which the learned play a significant role, or which is of importance for them. The documentation foregrounds categories, terms and designations of both the mental and theoretical and the social and material culture. The subject areas cover both education and scholarship (schools, university faculties, church, jurisprudence, medicine etc.) and everyday culture (court and town, home and garden, friends and family, travel, writing and reading etc.). Account is taken of both the different conditions within a period spanning more than three centuries and the specifics of the various national cultures which were forming in the Early Modern Age. The tradition or continuity of Classical Antiquity is a self-explanatory further factor. This Handbook thus provides a 'window' on the strangeness of the past by reconstructing the intrinsic semantic perspective of the concepts from their own time.

For historians of literature, law, science and philosophy among others, Herbert Jaumann has created an indispensable reference work that sharpens and corrects the image of the epoch in many respects; it will further research into the Early Modern Age and is in its way unique.