Edward the Confessor

Edward the Confessor or Eadweard III (c. 1004–January 4/5, 1066) was the penultimate Anglo-Saxon king of England and the last of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 until his death.1 His reign marked the continuing disintegration of royal power in England and the aggrandizement of the great territorial earls, and it foreshadowed the country's later connection with Normandy, whose duke William I was to supplant Edward's successors Harold and Edgar Ætheling as England's ruler.

Canonisation

When Henry II came to the throne in 1154 he united in his person at last the Saxon and Norman royal lines. To reinforce this new warrant of authenticity, the cult of King Edward the Confessor was promoted. Osbert de Clare was a monk of Westminster, elected Prior in 1136, and remembered for his lives of saints Edmund, Ethelbert, Edburga in addition to one of Edward, in which the king was represented as a holy man, reported to have performed several miracles, and touching people to heal them. Osbert was an active ecclesiastical politician as his surviving letters demonstrate, who was twice banished from the monastery and who went to Rome as an advocate for the canonisation of Edward culminating successfully in his canonisation by Pope Alexander III in 1161. In 1163, the newly sainted king's remains were enshrined in Westminster Abbey with solemnities presided over by Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. On this occasion the honour of preparing a sermon was given to Aelred, the revered Abbot of Rievaulx, to whom is generally attributed the vita in Latin, a hagiography partly based on materials in an earlier vita by Osbert de Clare and which in its turn provided the material for a rhymed version in octasyllabic Anglo-Norman French, possibly written by the chronicler Matthew Paris.

Related Topics:
Henry II - 1154 - Osbert de Clare - Westminster - 1136 - Edmund - Ethelbert - Edburga - Rome - Pope Alexander III - 1161 - 1163 - Westminster Abbey - Thomas Becket - Archbishop of Canterbury - Aelred - Rievaulx - Hagiography - Anglo-Norman - Matthew Paris

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When Edward was sanctified, there were two types of saints: martyrs and confessors. Martyrs were people who died in the service of the Lord and confessors were people who died natural deaths. Since Edward died a natural death, he was stylised Edward the Confessor.

Related Topics:
Martyr - Confessor

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The Roman Catholic Church regards Edward the Confessor as the patron saint of kings, difficult marriages, and separated spouses. After the reign of Henry II Edward was considered the patron saint of England until 1348 when he was replaced in this role by St. George.

Related Topics:
Roman Catholic Church - Patron saint - 1348 - St. George

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