A 19th Nineteenth Century Quixotic Quest (Book Review)

William Palmer of Magdalen College, University of Oxford, was not really a member or follower of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement, unlike William Palmer of Worcester College at the University of Oxford. 

Magdalen's Palmer did take some inspiration from Newman's interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles in Tract 90, but he went in a completely direction--or more accurately, he went further east than Rome and all the way to Russia. He sought to receive Holy Communion in the Russian Orthodox Church without renouncing his communion with the Church of England. His attempt to base his claim on Newman's image of the Church of England as a Via Media and part of the one Church founded by Jesus Christ was consistently refuted by Russian Orthodox clergy and never supported by any but a very few members of the Church of England or the Anglican Church of Scotland.

I purchased William Palmer: The Oxford Movement and a Quest for Orthodoxy from Eighth Day Books. According to the publisher,  Holy Trinity Seminary Press:

This is a fascinating account of a failed "journey to Orthodoxy" that should provide food for thought to all who may follow this path in the future and offer grounds for reflection to Orthodox believers on how to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks that can arise on the path to their Church.

This book charts the eccentric career of William Palmer, a fellow of Magdalen College and deacon of the Anglican Church. Seemingly destined for a conventional life as a classics don at Oxford, in 1840 and 1842 he travelled to Russia to seek communion with the Russian Orthodox Church. In interactions with Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret (Drozdov), the lay theologian Khomyakov, and others, he sought their affirmation that the Anglican Church was part of the ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church world-wide. Their discussions clarify the mutual misgivings and sincere theological disagreements that ultimately ended Palmer’s quest.

After some years in ecclesiastical limbo, Palmer followed the example of his Oxford friends such as John Henry Newman, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in Rome in 1855. He lived in Rome as a Catholic layman until his death in 1879.

This is a new edition of the work previously entitled Palmer's Pilgrimage: The Life of William Palmer of Magdalen, published by Peter Lang in 2006.

I might take issue with the description of "fascinating account" but certainly agree that Palmer of Magdalen had an "eccentric career". He pursued this quixotic quest of inter-communion with Russian Orthodoxy almost entirely alone, and author Robin Wheeler outlines the quest in great detail but sometimes flagging sympathy. My sympathy for the author and the publisher sometimes flagged too, because of the numerous typographical and formatting errors. One particular fault I found with the narrative is that biographical information on any personage introduced is placed in the end notes (at least it could have been in footnotes to the page!), meaning that the reader has to break off from the narration to find the notes at the back of the book. That might have been the required format for a PhD dissertation (?) but it's not helpful in a book. Also, the publisher should have provided some maps, since this is at least partially a travelogue. My sympathies never flagged with Palmer's father and brother, alternatively referred to as Selborne or Roundell (why?), and Dr. Martin Joseph Routh*, President of Magdalen College, who worked with Russell on his letters, proposals, and other documents, smoothing out his eccentricities of expression (calling himself the unworthy chief of sinners, etc), and other possibly offensive methods of presentation and persuasion. 

As he pursues these efforts, Palmer also continually urges the Russian Orthodox officials he meets with that they should be working to bring Anglicans, Lutherans, other Protestants, and Catholics into their Church, since (if) they believe it is the True Church founded by Jesus Christ. He is perplexed by their lack of zeal for conversions.

As Wheeler sums up the result of Palmer's unrelenting efforts on page 183: "Palmer's determined adherence to 'his private opinions' and his refusal to let sleeping dogs lie, meant that he was now regarded as an eccentric nuisance by both the Anglican and the Orthodox Churches." 

It is clear throughout Palmer's quest to be admitted to the Russian or Greek Orthodox communion that he wants his Sacramental Baptism in the Church of England to be accepted. As the old Dictionary of National Biography states the Catholic Church accepted his Baptism as valid so that he "was received into the Roman church, the rite of baptism being dispensed with, in the chapel of the Roman College on 28 Feb. 1855." The same, of course, had been true for Newman: he made a general confession, received absolution, and then received his First Holy Communion--there was no issue with his baptism in the Church of England. His brother Selborne supported him financially after his conversion to Catholicism and life in Rome.

On pages 230-232, Wheeler summarizes Palmer's "intellectual position" after his conversion: as being still with the Eastern Church liturgically and dogmatically, having "suspended his intellect" while expressing his "comfort in [his] present communion" and his "real peace" in  his "religious position" which he felt "able to defend." Rome (the Catholic Church) "spoke with one voice" and "the cultural difficulties remained" with his becoming Orthodox. By becoming Catholic he could receive "certain sacraments" as he could not in the Church of England--nor in the Eastern Churches without being re-baptized as he saw it--and hold "positive doctrine on certain points on which the Anglican church cannot, strictly speaking, be said to have any doctrine at all." (LP MS 1878, f. 255) 

He was already suffering from gout when he moved to Rome; then he began to suffer chest pain and insomnia, was bedridden, contracted pneumonia, and died on April 4, 1879. His brother Edwin attended the Catholic Funeral Mass.

Wheeler notes what a great classical scholar or ecclesiastic William Palmer could have been, except for his absolute refusal to compromise (although he seems to have compromised by becoming a Catholic), his "logical and stubborn" character and his lack of "common-sense". Nevertheless he never became "an eccentric nuisance" to the Pope or any Catholics in Rome.

I assure you that I had not read this characterization of him as an "ecclesiastical Don Quixote" (p. 249) before I wrote my headline! Palmer indeed "dream[ed] the impossible dream".

I do wonder if Wheeler, in that summary, should have done more to make clear the "grounds for reflection to Orthodox believers on how to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks that can arise on the path to their Church" highlighted in the publisher's blurb. By focusing at the end on Palmer's faults, he may have missed an opportunity.

The back matter of Abbreviations, End Notes, and Bibliography demonstrates Wheeler's in-depth research with access to many of Palmer's letters, journals, and works (some at the Birmingham Oratory since Palmer willed many unpublished works to Newman).

Newman edited and published Palmer's Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church after Palmer's death in 1879, 24 years years after being received into the Catholic Church. Then Cardinal Newman wrote in the Prefatory Notice in 1882 how this came about:

 . . . So much on the contents of this volume, which I have brought together and put into shape, to the best of my power, out of the materials and according to the evident intentions of Mr. Palmer, and, I should add, with the valuable assistance of the Rev. Father Eaglesim of this Oratory. I need hardly say I have no acquaintance with the Russian language, a condition, if not necessary, at least desirable, for my present undertaking; but I have been called to it, as a religious duty, in the following way:—I had often heard speak of Mr. Palmer's journals of foreign travel at the date when they were written; and years after, when he was wont to pay me an annual visit here in the summer or autumn, the only seasons in which the English climate was possible to him, I used to urge upon him their publication. But he never gave me any hopes of it, and I ceased to trouble him on the subject. After a time his spells of serious indisposition became so frequent, that when we took leave of each other, {xv} it was on my part with the sad feeling that I was bidding him a last farewell. At length the end came, in 1879, just before I, in turn, was to have been his guest at Rome [during Newman's trip to Rome to receive the Cardinalate from Pope Leo XIII]; and then I found to my surprise that, so far from passing over my wish about his journals, he had by will left me all his papers. This is how he answered my importunity, showing a loving confidence in me, though involving me in an anxious responsibility. Of course he did not anticipate that at my advanced age I could myself do much; but it will be a true satisfaction to me, if, as I am sanguine enough to expect, this volume, illustrative of his first visit to Russia, should prove interesting and useful generally to Christian readers.

I will say one word more:—I cannot disguise from myself that to common observers, Mr. Palmer was a man difficult to understand. No casual, nay, no mere acquaintance would have suspected what keen affections and what energetic {xvi} enthusiasm lived under a grave, unimpassioned, and almost formal demeanour. To unsympathetic or hostile visitors he was careless to defend, or even to explain, himself or his sayings and doings; and he let such men go away, indifferent what they might report or think of him. They would have been surprised to find that what in conversation they might think a paradox or conceit in him, was, whether a truth or an error, the deep sentiment and belief of a soul set upon realities and actuated by a severe conscientiousness. But, whatever might be the criticisms of those who saw him casually, no one who saw him much could be insensible to his many and winning virtues; to his simplicity, to his unselfishness, to his gentleness and patience, to his singular meekness, to his zeal for the Truth, and his honesty, whether in seeking or in defending it; and to his calmness and cheerfulness in pain, perplexity, and disappointment. However, I do not pretend to draw his character; {xvii} apart from all personal attributes, he was to me a true and loyal friend, and his memory is very dear to me.

I cannot help from comparing Newman and Palmer, because Palmer does not seem to have the same intellectual, spiritual, and moral certitude Newman did, nor make a real assent to the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church as Newman did. Newman writes in the fifth chapter of the Apologia pro Vita Sua, the "Position of My Mind Since 1845", that after becoming a Catholic, he had “no further history of [his] religious opinions to narrate”. Of course he was still thinking about theological and doctrinal matters, but he didn't have to form private judgments about them in the same way as he did before. For instance, he mentions the teaching on transubstantiation:

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe?

It seems that Palmer still maintained that private judgment or opinion and could not assent certainly to the belief that "the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God". Perhaps Wheeler would say that Newman was the one who compromised . . . but Newman in his search for truth had achieved certitude; Palmer may never have done . . . 

*Newman dedicated his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church to President Routh:

 

MARTIN JOSEPH ROUTH, D.D., PRESIDENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, WHO HAS BEEN RESERVED TO REPORT TO A FORGETFUL GENERATION WHAT WAS THE THEOLOGY OF THEIR FATHERS, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, WITH A RESPECTFUL SENSE OF HIS EMINENT SERVICES TO THE CHURCH AND WITH THE PRAYER THAT WHAT HE WITNESSES TO OTHERS MAY BE HIS OWN SUPPORT AND PROTECTION IN THE DAY OF ACCOUNT. (Feb. 24, 1837.)

More about Routh here, including this appreciation of Newman: 

Routh had a great personal regard for Newman and often they would meet for extended discussion of theological matters. He spoke of Newman as that ‘clever young gentleman of Oriel, Mr. Newman’, and later as ‘the great Newman’.

Image Credit (Public Domain): The Revd. Dr. Martin Routh (1755-1854), President of Magdalen College, Oxford (1791-1854). Anonymous daguerreotype): Routh was 99 years old when he died and "wore a wig and knee-britches in the Georgian manner to the end of his days", according to the history page on the Magdalen College website.