Edward the Confessor King Henry II and Pope Alexander III He was called 'Confessor' as the name for someone who was believed to have lived a saintly life but was not a martyr. In the 1230s King Henry III became attached to the cult of Saint Edward, and he commissioned a new life by Matthew Paris. Henry also constructed a grand new tomb for Edward in a rebuilt Westminster Abbey in 1269. He named his eldest son after him. Until about 1350, Edmund the Martyr, Gregory the Great and Edward the Confessor were regarded as English national saints, but Edward III preferred the
Iste confessor St Martin which was an extremely popular pilgrimage site for the sick. Although St Martin was a bishop and confessor, the hymn was gradually extended and came to be used for all confessors, including non-bishops in the Roman Breviary and other Latin liturgical rites. In the reforms following the Second Vatican Council, the 1974 Liturgy of the Hours has attempted to restore the hymn for primary use with bishop confessors, however it retains its more general usage where the pre-1974 Liturgies (such as the Roman Breviary) are used. Iste confessor Domini colentes <poem> 1 Iste confessor Domini colentes 2 Qui