Palmer, William - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, p. 413

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

PALMER, WILLIAM. — Anglican theologian, later a convert, born on 12 July 1811 at Mixbury, died on 4 April 1879 in Rome. He studied at Rugby and Oxford and subsequently became a lecturer at the Universities of Dublin and Oxford. He was closely associated with the Tractarian movement.

In 1840 he travelled to Russia with the intention of promoting the union of that Church with the Anglican Church. His mission failed, but two years later he returned to St Petersburg with the same objective. His request to be admitted into the Russian Church was not accepted. On returning to his homeland, he published a work in favour of union between the two Churches, concerning the harmony between Anglican and Greek doctrines (Harmony of anglican doctrine with the doctrine of the Eastern Church, Aberdeen 1846). In 1853 he published the Dissertations on subjects relating to the Orthodox or Eastern-Catholic Communion. During the Crimean War he took an interest in the question of the Holy Places. In Rome he converted to the Catholic religion and was baptised on 28 February 1855 in the chapel of the Collegio Romano. From then on, besides questions of the day (Remarks on the Turkish question, London 1858), he concerned himself especially with Christian antiquities. On this subject, his Introduction to Early Christian symbolism (London 1859) deserves mention.

BIBL.: S. Tyszkiwicz, Un épisode du mouvement d'Oxford: La mission de W. P., in Etudes, 136 (1913), pp. 43-63, 190-210, 329-47; J. M. Rigg, s. V. in Dictionary of National Biography, XV, London 1921-22, pp. 167-68, with bibliography: C. Lovera di Castiglione, Il movimento di Oxford, Brescia 1935, passim: C. Crivelli, Protestanti e cristiani orientali, Rome 1944, pp. 96-119.

PALMER, WILLIAM. - Anglican theologian, later a convert, born in Dublin on 14 February 1803, died in London in 1885. Having graduated from Trinity College, he received holy orders in Dublin in 1829. From 1828 to 1831 he was at Magdalen College, Oxford, and from 1831 to 1846 at Worcester College. Several studies on the origins of the liturgy soon brought him into contact with the principal figures of the Oxford Movement (Newman, Keble, Froud).

Article illustration — PALME, DOMENICA delle - Preparation of the p. that will be offered to the Holy Father on Palm Sunday.

Although he was a very active member of this movement, he nevertheless harboured strong prejudices against Rome, as appears from A Letter to N. Wiseman (2 vols., Oxford 1841), as well as from his attacks on the Papacy, published under the title Results of the Expostulation of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone in their relation to the Unity of Roman Catholicism (London 1875), under the pseudonym Umbra Oxoniensis.

He was considered by Fr. G. Perrone himself one of the most distinguished theologians of Oxford. This esteem was based on his numerous works, among which the following should be mentioned: Remarks on Dr. Arnold's Principles of Church Reform (Oxford 1833); The Apostolical jurisdiction and succession of the episcopy in the British Churches (London 1840); The Book of Church history (there 1841); An Enquiry into the Possibility of obtaining means for Church extension, without parliamentary grants (there 1841); A renewed enquiry... with especial reference to an increase in the episcopate (there 1848). His conversion to Catholicism dates from 28 February 1855, after which he devoted himself to archaeological research and published: An Introduction to early Christian Symbolism (there 1859); Egyptian Chronology (there 1861), etc.

BIBL.: W. Palmer, Narrative of Events, London and Oxford 1843; J. B. Mozley, Reminiscences chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement (1833-45), London 1865, passim: J. H. Newman, Essays critical and historical, 2 vols., there 1872 (cf. I, pp. 143-85; II, pp. 454-55); R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement, Twelve years, 1833-45, there 1891, passim: G. H. Knott, The Trial of W. P., Edinburgh and London 1912.

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