For more than a century before this time the Icelanders had made bitter complaint of the harshness of their bishops. Real despots they were—whose punishments were so cruel that the unhappy persons on whom they were inflicted declared that they should prefer death. At the epoch of the Reformation the two prelates of the island were—Oegmund Paulsen, bishop of Skalholt, and Johan Aresen, bishop of Holum, both priests worthy of their predecessors. The latter, an ignorant, domineering, obstinate, and vindictive man gave himself out for a descendant of the kings of Denmark and Norway, and even of Priam, king of Troy, and he was very proud of it. The character of Bishop Oegmund was less violent; but both he and his colleague were far more like feudal barons of the Middle Ages than shepherds of the Lord’s flock. At the time of the election of the bishop of Holum, Oegmund had supported a different candidate; consequently Aresen had sworn mortal hatred to him. This hostility of the two prelates occasioned division among the inhabitants of the island to such an extent that, in 1527, civil war was on the point of breaking out. They were, however, at last induced to settle the quarrel by a trial by single combat, a method not very agreeable to the spirit of the Gospel. Each of the two prelates selected his champion; and the two knights, representatives of the bishops, appeared armed _cap à pied_, and struck terrible blows at each other. Oegmund’s champion was the victor.[372] How would these strange characters, who were two or three centuries behind the rest of the world, receive the Reformation, which, all unknown to them, had begun to stir all Europe? The answer was not doubtful. [Sidenote: Oddur’s New Testament.]