An emblem, according to early studies, is a three-parted riddle composed of an image, title, and short text. Eventhough this definition had since gained much reservation, no one had disputed the enigmatic nature of the genre. From the second half of the 16th century up to the 18th century, decoding emblems became a popular ‘pastime’; not only in emblem books, but also as part of architectural and interior decoration, documentation, manuals, etc. Emblems appeared all over Europe: from England and Germany to Italy, from France, the Low Countries, and Denmark, Poland and Sweden, to Spain and even to the new world. Emblem books became universal best-sellers. They were translated, copied, or re-edited for the local, educated reader who could decipher them. We can well imagine the English, German or Italian scholar, probably in the company of his peers, sitting together in a studio or a library bending over a pile of books and trying to decipher the meaning hidden in them, or alternatively, a Danish scholar, dinning in the Red Hall at the Rosenborg Castel in Copenhagen commenting on the significance of the emblem he sees, painted on the ceiling above him. Although the meaning of these emblems was often a moralist one, it seems that they cannot be understood merely as an educational tool, and we cannot ignore the fact that they were, first and foremost, a "social game" for an elite group of ‘insiders’. In this seminar we will seek to understand the emblems in their context, in the way they were read, composed, and transferred within the closed circle of the "Republic of letters" – whose members, then as now, were only the finest.