BEL

bel, the name of a chief deity in babylonian religion, the counterpart of the phoenician baal (q.v.) ideographically written as en-lil. since bel signifies the "lord" or "master" _par excellence_, it is, therefore, a title rather than a genuine name, and must have been given to a deity who had acquired a position at the head of a pantheon. the real name is accordingly to be sought in en-lil, of which the first element again has the force of "lord" and the second presumably "might," "power," and the like, though this cannot be regarded as certain. en-lil is associated with the ancient city of nippur, and since en-lil with the determinative for "land" or "district" is a common method of writing the name of the city, it follows, apart from other evidence, that en-lil was originally the patron deity of nippur. at a very early period--prior to 3000 b.c.--nippur had become the centre of a political district of considerable extent, and it is to this early period that the designation of en-lil as bel or "the lord" reverts. inscriptions found at nippur, where extensive excavations were carried on during 1888-1900 by messrs peters and haynes, under the auspices of the university of pennsylvania, show that bel of nippur was in fact regarded as the head of an extensive pantheon. among the titles accorded to him are "king of lands," "king of heaven and earth" and "father of the gods." his chief temple at nippur was known as e-kur, signifying "mountain house," and such was the sanctity acquired by this edifice that babylonian and assyrian rulers, down to the latest days, vied with one another in embellishing and restoring bel's seat of worship, and the name itself became the designation of a temple in general. grouped around the main sanctuary there arose temples and chapels to the gods and goddesses who formed his court, so that e-kur became the name for an entire sacred precinct in the city of nippur. the name "mountain house" suggests a lofty structure and was perhaps the designation originally of the staged tower at nippur, built in imitation of a mountain, with the sacred shrine of the god on the top. the tower, however, also had its special designation of "im-khar-sag," the elements of which, signifying "storm" and "mountain," confirm the conclusion drawn from other evidence that en-lil was originally a storm-god having his seat on the top of a mountain. since the euphrates valley has no mountains, en-lil would appear to be a god whose worship was carried into babylonia by a wave of migration from a mountainous country--in all probability from elam to the east. when, with the political rise of babylon as the centre of a great empire, nippur yielded its prerogatives to the city over which marduk presided, the attributes and the titles of en-lil were transferred to marduk, who becomes the "lord" or bel of later days. the older bel did not, however, entirely lose his standing. nippur continued to be a sacred city after it ceased to have any considerable political importance, while in addition the rise of the doctrine of a triad of gods symbolizing the three divisions--heavens, earth and water--assured to bel, to whom the earth was assigned as his province, his place in the religious system. the disassociation from his local origin involved in this doctrine of the triad gave to bel a rank independent of political changes, and we, accordingly, find bel as a factor in the religion of babylonia and assyria to the latest days. it was no doubt owing to his position as the second figure of the triad that enabled him to survive the political eclipse of nippur and made his sanctuary a place of pilgrimage to which assyrian kings down to the days of assur-baui-pal paid their homage equally with babylonian rulers. see also belit and baal. for the apocryphal book of the bible, _bel and the dragon_, see daniel: _additions to daniel_. (m. ja.) bela iii. (d. 1196), king of hungary, was the second son of king geza ii. educated at the byzantine court, where he had been compelled to seek refuge, he was fortunate enough to win the friendship of the brilliant emperor manuel who, before the birth of his own son alexius, intended to make bela his successor and betrothed him to his daughter. subsequently, however, he married the handsome and promising youth to agnes of chatilion, duchess of antioch, and in 1173 placed him, by force of arms, on the hungarian throne, first expelling bela's younger brother geza, who was supported by the catholic party. initiated from childhood in all the arts of diplomacy at what was then the focus of civilization, and as much a warrior by nature as his imperial kinsman manuel, bela showed himself from the first fully equal to all the difficulties of his peculiar position. he began by adopting catholicism and boldly seeking the assistance of rome. he then made what had hitherto been an elective a hereditary throne by crowning his infant son emerich his successor. in the beginning of his reign he adopted a prudent policy of amity with his two most powerful neighbours, the emperors of the east and west, but the death of manuel in 1180 gave hungary once more a free hand in the affairs of the balkan peninsula, her natural sphere of influence. the attempt to recover dalmatia, which involved bela in two bloody wars with venice (1181-88 and 1190-91), was only partially successful. but he assisted the rascians or serbs (see hungary: _history_) to throw off the greek yoke and establish a native dynasty, and attempted to made galicia an appanage of his younger son andrew. it was in bela's reign that the emperor frederick i., in the spring of 1189, traversed hungary with 100,000 crusaders, on which occasion the country was so well policed that no harm was done to it and the inhabitants profited largely from their commerce with the german host. in his last years bela assisted the greek emperor isaac ii. angelus against the bulgarians. his first wife bore bela two sons, emerich and andrew. on her death he married margaret of france, sister of king philip augustus. bela was in every sense of the word a great statesman, and his court was accounted one of the most brilliant in europe. for an account of his internal reforms see hungary. though the poet ede szigligeti has immortalized his memory in the play _bela iii_., we have no historical monograph of him, but in ignacz acsady, _history of the hungarian realm_ (hung.), i. 2 (budapest, 1903), there is an excellent account of his reign. (r. n. b.) bela iv. (1206-1270), king of hungary, was the son of andrew ii., whom he succeeded in 1235. during his father's lifetime he had greatly distinguished himself by his administration of transylvania, then a wilderness, which, with incredible patience and energy, he colonized and christianized. he repaired as far as possible the ruinous effects of his father's wastefulness, but on his accession found everything in the utmost confusion, "the great lords," to cite the old chronicler rogerius (c. 1223-1266), "having so greatly enriched themselves that the king was brought to naught." the whole land was full of violence, the very bishops storming rich monasteries at the head of armed retainers. bela resolutely put down all disorder. he increased the dignity of the crown by introducing a stricter court etiquette, and its wealth by recovering those of the royal domains which the magnates had appropriated during the troubles of the last reign. the pope, naturally on the side of order, staunchly supported this regenerator of the realm, and in his own brother coloman, who administered the district of the drave, bela also found a loyal and intelligent co-operator. he also largely employed jews and ishmaelites,[1] the financial specialists of the day, whom he rewarded with lands and titles. the salient event of bela's reign was the terrible tatar invasion which reduced three-quarters of hungary to ashes. the terror of their name had long preceded them, and bela, in 1235 or 1236, sent the dominican monk julian, by way of constantinople, to russia, to collect information about them from the "ancient magyars" settled there, possibly the volgan bulgarians. he returned to hungary with the tidings that the tatars contemplated the immediate conquest of europe. bela did his utmost to place his kingdom in a state of defence, and appealed betimes to the pope, the duke of austria and the emperor for assistance; but in february and march 1241 the tatars burst through the carpathian passes; in april bela himself, after a gallant stand, was routed on the banks of the sajo and fled to the islands of dalmatia; and for the next twelve months the kingdom of hungary was merely a geographical expression. the last twenty-eight years of bela's reign were mainly devoted to the reconstruction of his realm, which he accomplished with a single-minded thoroughness which has covered his name with glory. (see hungary: _history_.) perhaps the most difficult part of his task was the recovery of the western portions of the kingdom (which had suffered least) from the hands of frederick of austria, who had seized them as the price of assistance which had been promised but never given. first bela solicited the aid of the pope, but was compelled finally to resort to arms, and crossing the leitha on the 15th of june 1246, routed frederick, who was seriously wounded and trampled to death by his own horsemen. with him was extinguished the male line of the house of babenberg. in the south bela was less successful. in 1243 he was obliged to cede to venice, zara, a perpetual apple of discord between the two states; but he kept his hold upon spalato and his other dalmatian possessions, and his wise policy of religious tolerance in bosnia enabled hungary to rule that province peaceably for many years. the new servian kingdom of the nemanides, on the other hand, gave him much trouble and was the occasion of many bloody wars. in 1261 the tatars under nogai khan invaded hungary for the second time, but were defeated by bela and lost 50,000 men. bela reached the apogee of his political greatness in 1264 when, shortly after his crushing defeat of the servian king, stephen urosh, he entertained at his court, at kalocsa, the ambassadors of the newly restored greek emperor, of the kings of france, bulgaria and bohemia and three tatar _mirzas_. for a time bela was equally fortunate in the north-west, where the ambitious and enterprising poemyslidae had erected a new bohemian empire which absorbed the territories of the old babenbergers and was very menacing to hungary. with ottakar ii. in particular, bela was almost constantly at war for the possession of styria, which ultimately fell to the bohemians. the last years of bela's life were embittered by the ingratitude of his son stephen, who rebelled continuously against his father and ultimately compelled him to divide the kingdom with him, the younger prince setting up a capital of his own at sarospatak, and following a foreign policy directly contrary to that of his father. bela died on the 3rd of may 1270 in his sixty-fourth year. with the people at large he was popular to the last; his services to his country had been inestimable. he married, while still crown-prince, maria, daughter of the nicaean emperor, theodore lascaris, whom his own father brought home with him from his crusade. she bore him, besides his two sons stephen and bela, seven daughters, of whom st margaret was the most famous. no special monograph for the whole reign exists. for the tatar invasion see the contemporary rogerius, _epistolae super destructione regni hungarias per tartaros facta_ (budapest, 1885). a vivid but somewhat chauvinistic history of bela's reign will be found in acsady's _history of the hungarian realm_ (hung.), i. 2 (budapest, 1903). (r. n. b.) footnote: [1] mahommedan itinerant chapmen, from the volga.