[Note 12: "Primum signum nobilitatis est liberalitas.">[
[Note 13: Alcinous.]
I do not pretend on this ground, most liberal monarch, to insinuate to your Majesty the most open frankness, for it would be very culpable on my part to venture to suggest a thing which, to your Majesty, is so natural that you would be unable to live without it. Nor will it happen to so high minded and liberal a lord and king, what befell the Emperor Titus who, remembering once, during supper time, that he had allowed one day to pass without doing some good, gave utterance to this laudable animadversion of himself. "O friends! I have lost a day[14]." For not only does your Majesty not miss a day, but not even an hour, without obliging all kinds of people with benefits and most gracious liberality. The whole people, with one voice, says to your Majesty what Virgil sang to Octavianus Augustus:
"Nocte pluit tota, redeunt spectacula mane,
Divisum imperium cum Jove Cæsar habet."
[Note 14: "Amici! diem perdidi." Suetonius.]
But what I desire to say is that for a king who complies so well with the obligation of liberality, and who gives so much, it is necessary that he should possess much; for nothing is so suitable for a prince as possessions and riches for his gifts and liberalities, as Tully says, as well as to acquire glory. For it is certain, as we read in Sallust that "in a vast empire there is great glory[15]"; and in how much it is greater, in so much it treats of great things. Hence the glory of a king consists in his possessing many vassals, and the abatement of his glory is caused by the diminution of the number of his subjects.
[Note 15: Proem of Catiline.]
Of this glory, most Christian king, God Almighty gives you so large a share in this life that all the enemies of the holy catholic church of Christ our Lord tremble at your exalted name; whence you most justly deserve to be named the strength of the church. As the treasure which God granted that your ancestors should spend, with such holy magnanimity, on worthy and holy deeds, in the extirpation of heretics, in driving the accursed Saracens out of Spain, in building churches, hospitals and monasteries, and in an infinite number of other works of charity and justice, with the zeal of zealous fathers of their country, not only entitled them to the most holy title of catholics, but the most merciful and almighty God, whom they served with all their hearts, saw fit to commence repayment with temporal goods, in the present age. It is certain that "He who grants celestial rewards does not take away temporal blessings[16]," so that they earned more than the mercies they received. This was the grant to them of the evangelical office, choosing them from among all the kings of this world as the evangelizers of his divine word in the most remote and unknown lands of those blind and barbarous gentiles. We now call those lands the Indies of Castille, because through the ministry of that kingdom they will be put in the way of salvation, God himself being the true pilot. He made clear and easy the dark and fearful Atlantic sea which had been an awful portent to the most ancient Argives, Athenians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and what is more to the proud Hercules, who, having come to Cadiz from the east, and seen the wide Atlantic sea, he thought this was the end of the world and that there was no more land. So he set up his columns with this inscription "Ultra Gades nil" or "Beyond Cadiz there is nothing." But as human knowledge is ignorance in the sight of God, and the force of the world but weakness in his presence, it was very easy, with the power of the Almighty and of your grandparents, to break and scatter the mists and difficulties of the enchanted ocean. Laughing with good reason at Alcides and his inscription, they discovered the Indies which were very populous in souls to whom the road to heaven could be shown. The Indies are also most abundant in all kinds of inestimable treasures, with which the heavy expenses were repaid to them, and yet remained the richest princes in the world, and thus continued to exercise their holy and Christian liberality until death. By reason of this most famous navigation, and new and marvellous discovery, they amended the inscription on the columns of Hercules, substituting "Plus ultra" for "Ultra Gades nil"; the meaning was, and with much truth, that further on there are many lands. So this inscription, "Plus ultra," remained on the blazon of the arms and insignia of the Indies of Castille.
[Note 16: From the poem of Coelius Sedulius, a Christian poet who flourished about A.D. 450. The passage is—"Hostis Herodes impie Christum venire quod timeo? Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat coelestia." (Note by Dr Peitschmann.)]
As there are few who are not afflicted by the accursed hunger for gold, and as good successes are food for an enemy, the devil moved the bosoms of some powerful princes with the desire to take part in this great business. Alexander VI, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, considering that this might give rise to impediments in preaching the holy evangel to the barbarous idolaters, besides other evils which might be caused, desired of his own proper motion, without any petition from the catholic kings, by authority of Almighty God, to give, and he gave and conceded for ever, the islands and main lands which were then discovered and which might hereafter be discovered within the limits and demarcation of 180° of longitude, which is half the world, with all the dominions, rights, jurisdictions and belongings, prohibiting the navigation and trading in those lands from whatever cause, to the other princes, kings, and emperors from the year 1493, to prevent many inconveniences.