books of popular piety, to render, above all, the reading of 
     these works more easily accessible to a very large public, 
     such was one of the principal tasks of print in its 
     beginnings.

     The largest public by far was for the medieval romances 
of chivalry, almanacs (shepherds’ calendars) and, above all, 
illustrated books of hours. Of the penetrating force of printing 
in the shaping of market and capital organization, Febvre and 
Martin have much to say. For the moment, it is relevant to 
bring out here their stress on the early effort of the printers to 
attain “homogenéité de la page” in spite of poor equilibrium of 
types, and “in spite of defective fonts and in spite of precarious 
lineality.” It is precisely these new effects which were still 
insecure that would strike the age as having the utmost charge 
of meaning and novelty of achievement. Homogeneity and