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
Theophanes the Confessor Theophanem"), who undertook the work at the instructions of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Attribution: Theophanes the Confessor Saint Theophanes the Confessor (; c. 758/760 – March 12, 817/818) was a member of the Byzantine aristocracy, who became a monk and chronicler. He is venerated on March 12 in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Theophanes was born in Constantinople of wealthy and noble iconodule parents: Isaac, imperial governor of the islands of the Black Sea, and Theodora, of whose family nothing is known. His father died when Theophanes was three years old, and the Byzantine Emperor Constantine V (740–775)