Plus Ultra
Encyclopedia : P : PL : PLU : Plus Ultra
- For other uses, see (disambiguation)}}}.
- redirect [[Template:Not verified]]
Plus Ultra (Latin for "More Beyond") is a Latin motto and the national motto of Spain.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor used it as his personal motto as an expression of the dynamism of the new imperial Cosmopolitanism. Earl Rosenthal has uncovered in detailed work the origin of the motto. It comes from Charles's personal physician and counselor, the Milan humanist Luigi Marliano. He advised the young duke and later emperor in 1515, when he reached adulthood and was appointed the Grand Master of the Order of the Golden Fleece, to put his office under the French motto Plus Oultre. This was meant to encourage him to challenge and disregard the ancient warning to navigators that, according to Roman mythology, Hercules had installed on two pillars beside the Strait of Gibraltar, where the border of the habitable world would be reached. With his motto Charles takes from Italy the new time mood expressed also in Ariosto's contemporary Italian poem "Orlando furioso" mentions the world discovered beyond the Pillars repeatedly.
As Charles became the king of Spain, this foreign motto and its connection to France was opposed in Spain, and later it was accordingly transformed into the more neutral Plus Ultra.
The learned grammarian Girolamo Ruscelli called the motto ungrammatical Latin, with the correct form being ulterius. Rosenthal's searches prove that the challenging Plus Ultra of Charles V cannot be a bold retort to a previous nec plus ultra, but simply the translation of Charles' motto Plus Oultre.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.