tendom, only elicited an express and explicit rejection on the part of the Russian church of the Anglican claim to catholicity. After a minute examination of the entire case, the holy governing synod declined to admit him to communion unless he acknowledged the Thirty-nine Articles of religion to be ‘in their plain literal sense and spirit’ a full and perfect expression of the faith of the churches of England and Scotland, and to contain forty-four heresies; unless he renounced and anathematised the said heresies, the Thirty-nine Articles as containing them and the churches of England and Scotland as implicated in them; and further admitted the Greek church to be the œcumenical church, and were received into the same as a proselyte.
The œcumenical character of the Greek church Palmer readily admitted; he also renounced and anathematised the forty-four heresies, but demurred to their alleged presence in the Thirty-nine Articles. On the question whether what he had done amounted to a renunciation of the churches of England and Scotland, he appealed to Bishop Luscombe and the Scottish Episcopal College.
On his return to England Palmer occupied himself in the composition of a ‘Harmony of Anglican Doctrine with the Doctrine of the Eastern Church’ (Aberdeen, 1846; Greek translation, Athens, 1851) and in the preparation of his case for the Scottish Episcopal College. The latter, which occupies a thick and closely printed volume, entitled ‘An Appeal to the Scottish Bishops and Clergy, and generally to the Church of their Communion,’ Edinburgh, 1849, 8vo, was dismissed unheard by the Scottish Episcopal Synod assembled in Edinburgh on 7 Sept. 1849.
Soon after the decision of the privy council in the Gorham case in 1852 Palmer again sought admission to the Greek church, but recoiled before the unconditional rebaptism to which he was required to submit. In 1853 appeared his learned and ingenious ‘Dissertations on Subjects relating to the Orthodox or Eastern-Catholic Communion,’ London, 8vo. On the eve of the Crimean war he studied the question of the Holy Places at Jerusalem. The winter of 1853–4 he passed in Egypt. He afterwards went into retreat under Passaglia at Rome, and there was received into the Roman church, the rite of baptism being dispensed with, in the chapel of the Roman College on 28 Feb. 1855.
For the rest of his life Palmer resided at Rome in the Piazza di Santa Maria in Campitelli, where he died on 4 April 1879, in his sixty-eighth year. His remains were interred (8 April) in the cemetery of S. Lorenzo in Campo Verano.
Palmer was a profoundly learned theologian, and (when he chose) a brilliant writer. His piety was deep and fervent, and, though a trenchant controversialist, he was one of the most amiable of men. In later life, notwithstanding broken health, he made laborious researches in ecclesiastical history and archæology. He left voluminous manuscripts, chiefly autobiographical. Dr. Newman, to whom he used to pay an annual visit at Birmingham, edited after his death his ‘Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church in the Years 1840, 1841,’ London, 1882, 8vo.
Besides the works mentioned above, Palmer was author of the following: 1. ‘Short Poems and Hymns, the latter mostly Translations,’ Oxford, 1843. 2. Ταπενὴ ἀναφορὰ τοῖς πατριάρχαις, Athens, 1850. 3. Διατριβαὶ περὶ τῆς Ἀγγλικῆς Ἐκκλησίas, Athens, 1851. 4. Διατριβαὶ περὶ τῆς άνατολικῆς ἐκκλησίas, Athens, 1852. 5. ‘Remarks on the Turkish Question,’ London, 1858. 6. ‘An Introduction to Early Christian Symbolism; being the Description of a Series of Fourteen Compositions from Fresco-paintings, Glasses, and Sculptured Sarcophagi; with three Appendices,’ London, 1859, 8vo; new edition, under the title ‘Early Christian Symbolism: a Series of Compositions,’ &c., ed. J. G. Northcote and W. R. Brownlow, London, 1885, fol. 7. ‘Egyptian Chronicles: with a Harmony of Sacred and Egyptian Chronology, and an Appendix on Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities,’ London, 1861, 2 vols. 8vo. 8. ‘Commentatio in Librum Danielis,’ Rome, 1874. 9. ‘The Patriarch Nicon and the Tsar,’ from the Russian, London, 6 vols. 1871–6.
[Rugby School Reg.; Bloxam's Magd. Coll. Reg.; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Oxford Honours List; Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church, ed. Cardinal Newman, with the above-mentioned Appeal; Egyptian Chronicles (Introduction); Neale's Life of Patrick Torry, D.D., 1856, chap. vi.; Tablet, 17 March 1855, and 12 April 1879; Guardian, 9 and 16 April; Times, 12 April 1879; Academy, 1879, i. 348; Charles Wordsworth's Annals of my Life, 1847–56, pp. 74–8; Liddon's Life of Pusey, ii. 287; Allies's Life's Decision, p. 337; E. G. Kirwan Browne's Annals of the Tractarian Movement, 1856, p. 180; T. Mozley's Reminiscences; Ornsby's Memoirs of Hope-Scott, ii. 12; Month, 1872, p. 168; North Amer. Rev. 1863, pt. i. 111; Eclectic Review, July 1862; Dublin Review, vol. xli.; Ibrahim Hilmy's Lit. Egypt.]
PALMER, WILLIAM (1803–1885), theologian and ecclesiastical antiquary, only son of William Palmer, military officer, of
