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
Confessor Confessor Confessor is a title used within Christianity in several ways. Its oldest use is to indicate a saint who has suffered persecution and torture for the faith but not to the point of death. The term is still used that way in the East. In Latin Christianity it has come to signify any saint, as well as those who have been declared blessed, who cannot be categorized by another title: martyr, apostle, evangelist, or virgin. As Christianity emerged as the dominant religion in Europe, persecutions became rare, and the title was given to saints who lived a holy life