ne plus ultra

During the reign of Charles X due to a shortage of coins many French cities produced their own money and Lille issued this Maximus coin, which had an intrinsic value of 1 liard (1 duit). Presumely struck 1827, as the Belgian VAN HENDE 1858 mentions in his Numismatique Lilloise, page 100/101. "In 1827 there appeared at Lille a copper coin, strange and new (illustration 241) with that money spread the rumour that it had been struck by one of our(Liege, Belgium) metal merchants. People claimed that the effigy was the Duke of Reischtadt(Napoleon II son of Napoleon Bonaparte), and there was political propaganda involved. The truth was that a merchant of Liege had sold to Mr. M*** for 4,000 francs of the lion 320.000 Maximus tokens/coins, which were circulated among all the small foreign coins then in use. In Lille the alleged currency took over, and despite its Belgian origin, we felt able to include it in our "Coinage of Lille"......"It is claimed that Hazebrouck(another town close to Lille) has also promoted the visit of a liege merchant, who would supply similar coinage to a boilermaker" The motto maximus non plus ultra = the greatest, none surpass. ------------------------------------------------------------------- plus ultra ---------------- I heard that ne plus ultra was inscribed on the spanish coins in Columbus day, and ne was x'd out after he discovered america. is this true? If the idea of Jesus Christ's resurrection is astonishing to us today, what must it have been to the people of His time—to those who had seen Him walking and talking and moving in their midst? Sometimes when I try to picture the effect His resurrection had on the populace living then, I see in my mind a very rare and very old Spanish coin. The coin, minted in the fifteenth century, was imprinted with a drawing of the narrow strait between Europe and Africa near Gibraltar, called the Pillars of Hercules. Inscribed at the bottom were the Latin words, Ne Plus Ultra, meaning "No More Beyond." To the Spanish of that time, that was it, there was not anything else out there. Then along came Columbus, and when he proved that a new world lay beyond, they had to remove the Ne from all the coins. From that time forward they read Plus Ultra—More Beyond."