Benzelius, Henry

, archbishop of Upsal, and brother tc the preceding, was born at Strengnes in 1689, and studied at Upsal. During his subsequent travels he happened to arrive at Bender, where Charles XII. was. This prince, who had more taste for the pursuit of scientific knowledge than is generally supposed, was desirous at this tim to send some men of learning to the East, and Benzehus was one whom he applied to, and who accordingly began his travels in 1714, visiting Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and returning to Sweden through Italy, Germany, and Holland. The journal of this tour is preserved in manuscript at Upsal but a considerable part of Benzelius’s observations were printed in a Latin collection, under the title of “Syntagma dissertationum in Academia Lundensi habitarum,” Leipsic, 1745, 4to. Benzelius, after his return to Sweden, was made professor of theology, bishop of Lunden, and archbishop of Upsal, where he died in 1758. He | was succeeded in the archbishopric by his brother Jacob, who wrote in Latin, an abridgment of theology, and a description of Palestine, and some other works. H. Jasper Benzelius, of the same learned family, who died about the end of the last century, bishop of Strengnes, had studied under Mosheim, and published in 1744 at Helmstadt, a Latin life or dissertation on John Dury, who in the seventeenth century, travelled over a considerable part of Europe, in hopes of reconciling the Lutherans and Calvinists. ¹