In the Middle Ages there were still only two or three types of greatness: the saint and the hero as well as the sage, and then on a lesser scale and as it were by reflection the pontiff and prince; the “genius” and “artist”, those glories of the secular universe, had not yet been born.
Saints and heroes are like the appearance of stars on earth, reascending after their death to the firmament, their eternal home; they are almost pure symbols, spiritual signs only provisionally detached from the celestial iconostasis in which they have been enshrined since the creation of the world.
Frithjof Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds, World Wisdom, USA, 2006, p. 24.