Edward the Confessor and abbacies. However, his appointments were generally respectable. When Odda of Deerhurst died without heirs in 1056, Edward seized lands which Odda had granted to Pershore Abbey and gave them to his Westminster foundation; the historian Ann Williams observes that "the Confessor did not in the 11th century have the saintly reputation which he later enjoyed, largely through the efforts of the Westminster monks themselves". After 1066 there was a subdued cult of Edward as a saint, possibly discouraged by the early Norman abbots of Westminster, which gradually increased in the early 12th century . Osbert of Clare, the prior
Joseph the Confessor Joseph the Confessor Joseph the Confessor was a 9th-century Archbishop of Thessalonica and brother of Theodore Stoudites. He is venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Together with his brother, they pursued a life of asceticism under the guidance of Plato of Sakkoudion in the latter's monastery at Sakkoudion, Bithynia. Later Joseph was unanimously elected archbishop of the city of Thessalonica. Together with his brother he spoke out against the illegal marriage of Emperor Constantine VI (the "Moechian Controversy"), for which, after the torment, he was imprisoned in a dungeon on a deserted island. Emperor Michael I Rangabe