Edward the Confessor and Henry II

This thesis focuses on Edward the Confessor (r. 1042-1066), an Anglo-Saxon “sacral king” who was declared a saint a century after his death. in a century torn by strife between the Church and slowly emerging national powers, King Henry II used the political symbol of King Edward and his real, personal presence in this world as Saint Edward to support a strong royalist view of authority against the clericalist view of the English Church of his day. As both a king and a saint, Edward became a perfect illustration of the fundamental Medieval dilemma of how to reconcile and properly relate the “two orders” of Christian society, the temporal and the spiritual.