Plural of confessor; priests or spiritual leaders who hear confessions and offer spiritual guidance and absolution.
From confessor (from Latin confessorum, plural of confessor, from confessus + -or agent suffix). The word entered English through Old French and became standardized in church vocabulary.
In medieval monasteries, the most experienced monks served as confessors, and there's evidence from confessional manuals that some confessors were surprisingly psychologically sophisticated—they knew certain people needed gentleness, others needed firmness.
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