BEL, or BELIUS, Matthias, an Hungarian divine and historiographer to the Emperor Charles VI. His History of Hungary was so greatly admired that the emperor gave him letters of nobility; and notwithstanding his being a Lutheran, the pope, in 1736, sent him his picture and several gold medals. He was a member of the Royal Society of London, and of the academies of Berlin and Petersburg. He died in 1749, aged sixty-five.