ABSTRACT
The archetype is atemporal to the extent that it is part of its nature not only to have existed first, but also to have given rise to the temporality that explains its successors. This claim to find the same patterns of motivation gravitating around the same magnetic poles in every conceivable context is likely to irritate those who believe in freedom. It is surely in this sense too that Rabelais presents Homenaz as the archetype of a pope: he is not the first pope or the first church leader, but the one who offers us the most complete image of the qualities and virtues that people should like to see in someone holding his office. Conversely, it can easily be argued that, in the modern mind, Hider is the historicized archetypal image of the Devil, who occurs in all religions in at least some of his manifestations.
