The papers published here were presented at an international symposium held in 2002 at Heidelberg, at which international experts investigated the literary output at the end of the 14th century and at the beginning of the 15th of the first three universities founded within the medieval Holy Roman Empire north of the Alps: Prague, Vienna and Heidelberg. The articles provide insights into a great variety of academic texts till now rarely examined and the specific conditions of their production, and trace the interrelations between these universities which were narrowly interlinked by many itinerant teachers and scholars. The papers deal with the scholarly Latin texts, which often originated directly from teaching, as well as the vernacular texts stimulated or influenced by academic learning in the practice fields of preaching, religious doctrine, edification, pastoral theology, and general popularizing of scholarship.