Melanchthon‹s relationship with Calvin and Calvinism has often been examined in the past, mainly with regard to the theological issues of the Reformation: the Heidelberg Catechism, the doctrine of predestination, the problem of free will, the question of the Lord‹s Supper, exegesis etc. It is common knowledge that these issues had already been summarized in the polemical rhetoric of Crypto-Calvinism during the Reformation. The state of research in a further cultural and historical context however takes on a completely different appearance, since this is a context which is not determined only by the common ground and issues in theology but also by the constitutive conditions of scholarship and culture in the early modern period. The articles in this volume examine the question of Melanchthon‹s influence on the cultural history of the early modern period in the Calvinism of the countries in which Romance languages were spoken and of the English-speaking world.