INTRODUCTION. x li x 
and the education and instruction of young men 
began to be more attended to than before. Their 
manhood lasted till about the middle of the four¬ 
teenth century, when the sciences gradually de¬ 
creased and were almost wholly extinct, no work 
of any merit appearing. History now drooped 
her head, poetry had no relish, and all the 
other sciences were enveloped in darkness. The 
schools began to decay, and in many places they 
even had none at all. It was very uncommon 
for any one to understand Latin, and few priests 
could with fluency read their breviary or rituals. 
The reformation *, however, produced in Ice¬ 
land a new dawn of learning; and a few rays 
of that light which has blazed over Europe from 
the discovery of printing shed a gleam on this 
remote island; but it is to Bishop Areson, one 
of the most illiterate and bigotted of the Roman 
catholic bishops that the inhabitants are indebted 
for the introduction of the first printing-press. 
He, anxious to undermine the power of the king 
and to hinder the progress of the reformation, 
but at the same time ignorant of the Latin 
language which was made use of in letters of 
excommunication and other ordinances, commis¬ 
sioned a friend to procure him a person well 
* Von Troil. 
d 
