Q&A with Fr John Flader. This week: Why is it that some saints are called confessors while others
are not? I think, for example, of St Edward the Confessor. I have
noticed that the title confessor is given to both clerics and lay
people. What exactly is a confessor?
By Fr John Flader
Let me say at the outset that the name confessor in this case has nothing to do with the hearing of confessions! It comes from the Latin word confiteri, meaning to declare or profess openly, and it refers to someone who professes the faith boldly.
Before the reform of the liturgical calendar after the Second Vatican Council, some saints were referred to in the calendar and in the missal as confessors, others as martyrs, virgins, etc.
Since the reform, the term confessor is no longer used in this context.
The designation of saints as confessors in the liturgical calendar goes back to the early Church, where it came to mean saints who were not martyrs but who proclaimed their faith publicly by the witness of their lives.
Our Lord taught the importance of professing one’s faith before others: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:32-33).
In the first century it seems there was no clear distinction between confessors and martyrs. Thus a Christian who suffered imprisonment, torture or exile but had not given his life for the faith was sometimes called a martyr.
This is understandable if we consider that the Greek word martyr means a witness. Thus anyone who witnessed to the faith was a martyr, even though he did not shed his blood.
For example, Eusebius, the fourth century bishop and historian, says that the descendants of St Jude, who were brought before the emperor Domitian and dismissed as harmless after being interrogated, were venerated as martyrs.
In the second half of the second century, a distinction came to be made between martyrs, who had actually died for the faith, and confessors, who had only suffered for proclaiming it.
But even then the distinction was not applied universally.
For example, Origen, in his Commentary on John 2, 34, taught that only those who had proved their faith by shedding their blood could properly be called martyrs, yet he admitted in the same writing that the word martyr could also be applied to anyone who had witnessed in any way to the Truth.
At the beginning of the third century, St Cyprian, bishop in North Africa, wished those who died in prison, even if not tortured, to enjoy the same honours as martyrs.
It was around the middle of the third century that the word confessor came to be associated with one who, although suffering for the faith, had not actually died for it.
The word also came to have another, broader meaning. St Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215) used the term to refer to hermits and monks who professed their faith through a life of penance and prayer but did not suffer for it at the hands of others. Eventually the term confessor came to mean any saint who was not a martyr.
In the Eastern Church the first ones to receive public veneration as confessors after the persecutions were Saints Anthony (d. 356), Hilarion (d. 371) and Athanasius (d. 373).
In the West the first confessors venerated as such were Saints Sylvester (d. 335), Martin of Tours (d. 397), Severus (d. ca. 409) Augustine (d. 430), and Apollinaris (fifth century).
From the 13th century on, when processes of canonisation were reserved to the Pope, it was only the Pope who could declare someone a confessor.
St Edward the Confessor was king of England from 1042 to 1066, the year of his death. A pious man, known as a friend of the poor and the clergy, he died childless and was buried at Westminster Abbey, which he had built. He was canonised in 1161 by Pope Alexander III.