Despite the tendency to conservatism innate in every canon, the Western canon also has in it a revolutionary ingredient deriving from its acceptance of the hero archetype.  It goes without saying that this hero figure is not the central point of the canon, nor is its revolutionary influence very easy to recognize; but when one sees in how short a space of time the most revolutionary figures of ecclesiastical history became assimilated and produced a new variation of the canon, one realizes the full significance of the acceptance into it of the hero archetype.

• the hero
• archetypes
• assimilation
• western thought
• time
• history
• influence