Palmer, William

PALMER, WILLIAM. - Anglican theologian, later a convert, b. 12 July 1811 at Mixbury, d. 4 April 1879 in Rome. He studied at Rugby and at Oxford and then became a lecturer at the Universities of Dublin and Oxford. He was very close to the Tractarian movement.

In 1840 he made a journey to Russia with the intention of promoting the union of that Church with the Anglican one. His mission failed, but two years later he returned to St. Petersburg with the same purpose. His request to be admitted into the Russian Church was not granted. Having returned to his homeland, he published a work in favor of the union between the two Churches on 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 baptized on 28 February 1855 in the chapel of the Collegio Romano. From then on he occupied himself, besides with questions of the day (Remarks on the Turkish question, London 1858), above all with Christian antiquities. On this subject his Introduction to Early Christian symbolism (London 1859) is worthy of note.