The Colliget of Averroes and the Theizir of Avenzoar, Venice 1542
A Venetian folio of 1542 that prints, as one book, the medical encyclopaedia of Ibn Rushd of Cordoba and the therapeutic manual of Ibn Zuhr of Seville — the two Andalusi physicians Latin Europe read together for four centuries. The Colliget's own prologue says who commissioned it, what it was for, and where its author claimed nothing new. A Renaissance editor added the marginal index and the doubts. It is the transmission, not the Arabic text, that this volume witnesses.
Why this wins its question: English-language coverage of Averroes is philosophical almost without exception: the commentator on Aristotle, the subject of the Latin Averroist controversy. His medical encyclopaedia is named in a clause and not opened, and Avenzoar is usually a footnote to it. This object opens the book — a full-view 1542 Venetian folio of the Munich copy — and quotes the pages that carry the interesting material: the title page that sells brevity against bulk and admits a Renaissance professor's doubts were bound in with it, the flyleaf note recording that the two works stand in the reverse of the advertised order, Avenzoar's preface saying he wrote only under pressure and to correct corrupt student copies, and Averroes naming his own book, defending his arrangement against other authors, and disclaiming any originality in his anatomy on his first page. It also states plainly what a Latin folio cannot witness — the Arabic wording — and puts the burning of the author's other books on the record next to the survival of this one.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The volume is a single folio printing of two separate Andalusi medical works. Its title page reads "COLLIGET AVERROIS" and, below, "THEIZIR ABYNZOAR", and closes with the imprint "VENETIIS, Apud Octauianum Scotum, D. Amadei F. 1542". The copy read is the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek's, shelfmark 2 Med.gen. 11.
The title page sells the Colliget on brevity against bulk. It describes the book as "Totam medicinam ingentibus voluminibus ab alijs traditam mira quadam breuitate et ordine sic ad amusim complectens, vt iure ab omnibus liber iste medicorum stimulus cognominetur" — comprehending in a remarkable brevity and order the whole of medicine that others had handed down in enormous volumes, so that the book might rightly be called the goad of physicians.
The Theizir is billed on the same page as covering "Morbos omnes, tam vniuersales quam particulares, et eorundem remedia continens, opus si quod aliud in curandis egrotis accuratum, egregium, vtillimum" — all diseases, general and particular, and their remedies. The page adds that the whole has been more diligently revised, embellished and printed than before.
A third text was added by the publisher. The title page announces "Accesserunt postremo M. Anto. Zimarre dubia & solutiones in supradictum Auerrois colliget, nouum corollarium" — the doubts and solutions of Marcantonio Zimara on the Colliget, as a new corollary. What a sixteenth- century reader bought was therefore a medieval Arabic work, a medieval Latin translation of it, and a contemporary Italian professor's difficulties with it, bound as one.
The order inside the volume reverses the order on the title page. The Theizir begins at leaf 2 and the Colliget only at leaf 45, a point a later librarian thought worth writing on the front flyleaf of the Munich copy in German: that in the text the Theizir of Avenzoar comes first, and only with leaf 45 and following does the Colliget of Averroes come.
Leaf 2 recto is headed PROHEMIVM and opens "Incipit Liber theizir dahalmodana vahaltadabir cuius est interpretatio rectificatio medicationis et regiminis editus in Arabico a perfecto viro Abimeron abynzoahar" — the book whose interpretation is the rectification of treatment and regimen, brought out in Arabic by Abu Marwan ibn Zuhr. The author's own preface begins "DIXIT seruus Regis Ablymeron Abinzohar", and says he compiled the book only under the force and pressing of many entreaties, and to correct what had gone wrong in corrupt copies then circulating among students.
Both works stand under Almohad patronage, and both say so on the page. Avenzoar's preface asks that God preserve the honour and nobility of "domini mei miramamolini" — my lord the Commander of the Faithful — before it begins to compile. The Colliget's prologue at leaf 45 states that the will was moved upon its author by the precept of the lord "mirelmomini de marocho", who ordered him to compile one book in which the whole science of medicine should be contained in Arabic.
Leaf 45 recto is headed PROLOGVS and opens "Incipit Liber de medicina Auerrois: qui dicitur Colliget: et totalis Liber iste continet libros septem partiales" — here begins the book of medicine of Averroes, which is called Colliget, and this whole book contains seven partial books. The running foot of the volume reads "Col. Auer."
The author names his own book and explains his arrangement in the same paragraph: he compiled it as a universal book, "et vocaui nomen suum colliget", beginning from the most general matters and descending thence to particulars; and he divided it into seven parts, setting each part as one book. He also states that his order is not the order other authors chose, and defends it as the one better suited to teaching the subject.
The prologue then summarises the seven books in turn, five of them legible on the recto: the first treats of anatomy; the second is named the book of health; the third is called the book of diseases; the fourth is named the book of signs; and the fifth is named the book of medicines and foods. This matches the seven-part structure a modern account describes for the Arabic Kitab al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb.
The book states its own limit, and it does so about its opening subject. Of the first book Averroes writes that he will not enlarge upon it, because he promises to say nothing new in it that has not been said by other authors — which, he adds, he does promise to do in the other books, where he will renew matters the ancient physicians did not perceive. An encyclopaedia advertised on the title page as a goad to physicians disclaims originality in its anatomy on its first page of text.
The printing was made to be used rather than admired. The outer margin of the Theizir carries a printed finding-index of indications set against the passages they belong to — among them Ad sterilitatem, Ad colicam, Ad scabiem, Ad ptisim and Ad sanitatem conseruandam per motum — so that a physician could enter the text at a complaint instead of reading it through. The opening initial of the preface is a historiated woodcut showing a turbaned physician.
On the modern account, Ibn Rushd was born at Cordoba in 1126 into a family of jurists — his grandfather grand judge of the city — served as judge at Seville from 1169 and at Cordoba from 1171, became physician to the Caliph at Marrakesh in 1182, and died at Marrakech on 10 December 1198. The Kitab al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb was written between 1153 and 1169, translated into Hebrew and Latin some ninety years later, and taught in Europe until the eighteenth century.
The pairing printed at Venice was designed by the authors themselves. The same account states that Ibn Rushd asked his associate Ibn Zuhr to compose al-Taisir, covering diseases from head to toe, so that the two texts together would form one comprehensive medical textbook — and that they sometimes appear together in Latin editions. The 1542 folio is an instance of that intention surviving translation, four centuries and a printing press.
The cost belongs beside the achievement, and the same source carries it. Ibn Rushd fell out of favour over the opposition his writings raised among theologians; he was accused of heresy, interrogated and banished to Lucena, and the Caliph ordered his books burned, sparing only the works on medicine, arithmetic and astronomy. The banishment was later revoked. That the medical work survived to be printed at Venice is in part a consequence of which books the order exempted.
What the volume witnesses should not be overstated. Every word read here is Latin: the Colliget and the Theizir reach this page through medieval translators and a Renaissance editor who revised, re-set and annotated them, and the title page says so when it claims the whole has been more diligently revised than before. The volume is evidence for what Europe read and when, not for the wording of the Arabic originals.