Palmer's Pilgrimage: The Life of William Palmer of Magdalen (review)

The history of the Oxford Movement includes two prominent persons named William Palmer: Sir William Patrick Palmer (1803–85) of Worcester College (Oxford), an Anglican theologian and liturgical scholar who advocated the so-called "Branch Theory," and William Palmer (1811–79) of Magdalen College (Oxford) whose "pilgrimage" from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism is narrated in this volume. A graduate of Rugby and Magdalen, Palmer earned a First Class degree in Classics, as well as the Chancellor's Prize, first for Latin Verse in 1830 and then for Latin Essay in 1833. Although he served as a tutor at the newly established University of Durham and subsequently at Magdalen, his driving passion was the establishment of full communion between the Church of England and the Orthodox Church.

In pursuit of this goal, Palmer journeyed to Russia to dialogue with Orthodox theologians there. This project was quixotic in multiple ways: first, he was only an Anglican deacon and only credentialed by the president of his college, Martin Joseph Routh (1755–1854), who was incredibly tolerant about Palmer's absences from his duties at Oxford. Second, as the Russians came to recognize, Palmer's Tractarian ecclesiology was not representative of what the Church of England actually believed, but what he would have liked for it to believe. Like John Henry Newman (1801–90), who attempted to reconcile Anglicanism's Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion with the teachings of the Council of Trent, Palmer tried to interpret the Articles in harmony with Orthodox doctrine. While Palmer convinced himself of the merit of his ecumenically oriented interpretation of the church, he could not convince either the Russian or the Greek theologians whom he contacted. When he failed to gain support within the Church of England, he turned first to the Episcopal Church of Scotland and then to the Episcopal Church in the United States, but with scant success.

Dissatisfied with the Protestant character of Anglicanism yet feeling that entrance into either the Russian or Greek Orthodox churches would be culturally alienating, Palmer decided to enter the Roman Catholic Church in 1855, even though not all his theological difficulties had been resolved. He spent the last two dozen years of his life as an academic recluse working on his multi-volume The Patriarch and the Tsar—an account of the reform-minded Patriarch Nikon (1605–81) and the vacillating Tsar Alexius (1629–76), father of Peter the Great—a labor of love that evidenced Palmer's brilliant academic abilities, but garnered minimal readership. Finally, his Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church contained material selected and arranged by Cardinal Newman for posthumous publication in 1882.

On the whole, Palmer's Pilgrimage is a biographical memoir both well written and well researched. In writing this volume, the author consulted sources in a variety of languages, both ancient and modern—which may be a reason why Palmer has received little academic attention to date. The author has also gone to considerable pains to identify the numerous personalities—ranging from Victorian politicians to Orthodox ecclesiastics—whom Palmer knew; regrettably, however, not all of these names appear in the brief index. Like Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), Palmer's Pilgrimage makes fascinating reading—especially for those interested in nineteenth-century Anglicanism. And like Newman's Apologia, this biography for all practical purposes ends with Palmer's entrance into the Roman Catholic Church: could more have been said about the last two decades of his life that even by Victorian standards was extremely eccentric?