Plus Ultra - Definition

Plus Oultre on a gable of a Flemish house in Ghent, Charles V's birthplace

The motto of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor was Plus Ultra ("Beyond"), 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' personal physician and counselor, the Milan humanist Luigi Marliano. He advised the young duke and later emperor, 1515 with his adulthood to Grand Master of the medal by the Gold en Fleece had been appointed, to put his office under the French motto Plus Oultre. This Program meant challenging disregard of the warning for navigators that, according to the myth, Hercules had installed on both pillars in the Strait of Gibraltar, here the Border of the habitable world would be reached.

As Charles became the king of Spain this foreign motto and its implicit confession to the French culture was opposed in Spain and was transformed into an unshocking Plus Ultra (the learned grammarian Girolamo Ruscelli called it bad 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." 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).

"Plus Ultra" is still used as a national motto of Spain.