A large rectangular ornamental headpiece features intricate scrollwork, floral motifs, and two small putti or figures flanking a central circular emblem containing a landscape scene.

PROTITVLO

CANONIS AVICENNAE.

The Canon of Fabius Paulinus.

A large historiated initial D depicts a scholar or saint seated at a desk within an architectural setting.

THERE are two things which some are accustomed to criticize in this title of Avicenna, "Canon of Medicine." The first is that it appears arrogant, as it claims more for itself than for Hippocrates and Galen, as if he alone had created the norm and rule of medicine. The second is that it uses metaphors, which, since they should be avoided in the teaching of arts according to the prescriptions of not only rhetoricians but also philosophers and Galen himself, should much less have been used in a title, since a fault in the beginning of any discourse is a vice. Therefore, I thought it would be worth my effort—when the printers asked me to write something as soon as possible (as is their custom) to fill this page, which otherwise would have been empty—to discuss this matter briefly, to defend Avicenna from such calumny, and to explain the entire rationale of this title. So that the whole matter may be understood more clearly, I must define the primary notion of this word, to what things its meaning is subsequently transferred, and how it is established here by Avicenna. But first, I will say a few words about its origin, which is also called into question. Some think that the name Canon is Greek, others that it is Syrian. However, we say it is neither Greek nor Syrian, but has flowed from a Hebrew source. For, first of all, there exists no derivation of this word among the Greeks, and although a certain etymological explanation is brought forth in the Etymological dictionary, it is laughed at by the learned because it does not correspond to the translated notions of the word, but to the proper ones. For it says kanōn para to kainō to koptō; ho ta tōn lexeōn koptōn zētēmata Canon, from "kainō," which means I kill, he who defines the problems of words and as it were kills them; for this notion of the word is transferred for the sake of writing. Properly, it signifies a reed or a small cane, from whose similarity all other notions have flowed, as I shall show, which in the Hebrew language is called קנה qaneh, from which this word is derived. Therefore, it is also written with a single ν n, and it has been so received among the Greeks that it is considered purely Greek. Homer, in the 23rd book of the Iliad, used it in a certain comparison in that notion, where he says—

— hōs hote tis te gynaikos eüzōnoio ———
stētheos esti kanōn, ——— that is.
And just as a woman of goodly girdle
Puts the reed behind her breast, ——— where the Greek scholiast says Kanōn ho kalamos peri hon eileitai ho mitos ho hysurgikos The canon is the reed around which the weaving thread is wound. Because this reed is usually very straight by nature, it is therefore transferred to explain all straight things, both corporeal and incorporeal. It is called, first, the rule stathmē plumb line/level, an instrument by which lengths are directed, which they also call a square and a line. Aristotle used this notion in the first book of the Rhetoric regarding judges, whom he says define themselves hōsper kanona like a canon, that is, distorted like a rule by the artifice of orators and led away from the straight. It is also called a perpendicular, kathetos, which is an instrument invented for directing heights. Thirdly, it is also called gnōmōn, that is, a norm, which is an instrument by which angles receive a straight form, which is commonly called a squara square in Venice. From these instruments, in the second place, it is transferred to many other things and to men, and is used for equilibrium