What does it mean to canonize a text?
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The idea comes from Christianity and especially Catholicism.
When people first started to write down what is now the bible they had to decide which books to include and which not.
There were a ton of other gospels and other texts around and the leaders of the time had to decide which they wanted to be part of their holy text and which not.
As you can imagine this was a process not without arguments. Various groups had different ideas about which prophets, psalms, gospels and letters to include.
When the Catholic church became a distinct thing they set down a “rule” about which parts were officially part of their bible.
That was the biblical Canon.
Anything that was not part of the canon was apocryphal.
Over time people came to use this idea as a metaphor to describe essential text on a subject as canonical when everyone agreed that they should be read by anyone who studied the matter at hand.
In more recent times it has become used to describe works of fiction. Especially shared worlds written by many different creators that and lots of fans arguing about it have taken up the idea that certain works form the core part of the story and others may feature the same characters and settings but are not “true” for the rest of the fictional world.
When you canonize a text you declare it to be part of your holy book, or metaphorically to be part of the essential reading on a subject or official part of the backstory of a fictional world.
People can get very worked up about question such as if Jesus childhood adventures are canon vs the Gospel of Judas or if the Star Trek Technical manual is canon vs the Star Trek Animated series, so it is best to stay out of such discussions.
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