"confessor," mid-14c., agent noun from shrive (v.).
Entries linking to shriver
shrive v.
Middle English shriven "make confession; administer the sacrament of penance to," from Old English scrifan "assign, prescribe, ordain, decree; impose penance, hear confession; have regard for, care for," apparently originally "to write" (strong, past tense scraf, past participle scrifen), from Proto-Germanic *skriban (source also of Old Saxon scriban, Old Frisian skriva "write; impose penance;" Old Dutch scrivan, Dutch schrijven, German schreiben "to write, draw, paint;" Danish skrifte "confess"), an early borrowing from Latin scribere "to write" (from PIE root *skribh- "to cut"), which in Old English and Scandinavian developed further to "confess, hear or receive confession."