Robert’s responsibilities as a printer in his own name begin with 1524, in which year he became proprietor of the paternal _Imprimerie_. He was then twenty-one years of age. He had been able to profit but little from the training of his father, Henry, the first of the Estiennes who had devoted himself to printing, as the latter had died when Robert was but seventeen, but he had, as before noted, had the advantage of the supervision of his step-father Colines, himself both a skilled printer and a good scholar. The work of the young printer was begun in troublous times both for France and for Europe. It was but eight years since, by the burning at Wittenberg of the papal bull, Luther had initiated the great contest of the Reformation. The wordy strife of the theologians was proceeding with increasing bitterness throughout all Christian lands, and behind the theological contentions of the scholars, the feelings of the common people were being aroused into a condition of ferment and dogmatic partisanship such as the world had not yet witnessed, and which was for years to come, in the name of Christianity, to bring desolation upon many lands. This excited condition of France, Germany, and Switzerland, the desolating wars which followed, the absorption of the minds of men in theological issues, and the measures for a repressing censorship of the productions of the printing-press, which, immediately after the beginning of the Reformation, were instituted by the authorities both of Church and of State, were, of necessity, serious obstacles in the way of development of publishing undertakings, or at least of undertakings depending upon purely literary interests. On the other hand, the general ferment in the minds of men, a ferment which, as we have noted, was by no means confined to the scholarly circles, brought about a very great development in the intellectual activities and the literary interests of Europe, causing “many to read who never read before, while those who read before, now read the more.” Mark Pattison points out that the Reformation was not only an appeal to Scripture versus tradition, but also “an appeal to history.”[5] The makers of such an appeal must, of course, in order to render their contention effective, place within the reach of their communities the literature of the history cited as authoritative. The printing-press had been in use for three quarters of a century, but the demand for books had still (as in the manuscript period) been in large part restricted to the scholarly circles of the universities and of the educated ecclesiastics.