LONDON — The Church of England moved another step closer to an unbridgeable schism between traditionalists and reformers on Saturday when its General Synod, or parliament, rejected a bid by the archbishop of Canterbury to strike a compromise over the ordination of women bishops aimed at preserving the increasingly fragile unity of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The rejection of proposals aimed at accommodating those who oppose women bishops appeared to strike a serious blow to the authority of the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, whose position as archbishop of Canterbury makes him the spiritual leader of the Communion. Although he has a long-established reputation as a liberal on theological issues, the archbishop, 60, has spent much of his seven years as the Anglican leader seeking to fashion compromises with traditionalists over the role of women and gays as priests and bishops.

But the votes on Saturday appeared to have blocked, perhaps conclusively, a settlement under which hard-line traditionalists might have accepted the appointment of women bishops. The proposals would have provided for a “complementary” male bishop with independent powers, working alongside a woman bishop, to minister to traditionalists unwilling to accept a woman as the head of their diocese.

The narrow rejection of the archbishop’s compromise proposals at the Synod meeting in the northern English city of York appeared to raise the threat of a new wave of defections by traditionalists among the church’s laity and clergy to the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI had responded to the internal divisions among Anglicans last year by offering special provisions for disaffected Anglicans wishing to convert to Catholicism — a move that has led to resentment among some Anglicans.

An earlier wave of defections followed the Church of England’s decision to accept openly gay priests, and moves by the Episcopal Church in the United States to ordain gay bishops.

That led to the offer of special terms for Anglican converts that was made last October by Benedict, and to the shock that was provoked among leading Anglicans, including the archbishop of Canterbury, who saw it as a blow to their efforts to hold Anglicanism together in the face of its deep divisions.

Resentment over the pope’s move has cast a pall over his state visit to Britain in September, which will be the first papal visit to Britain since Pope John Paul II visited in 1982. The archbishop, who has been a major advocate of reconciliation between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, has signaled his disdain for the pope’s move by making statements that have conveyed a mood of indifference toward the papal visit.

The proposed compromise in York was co-sponsored by the second most senior prelate in the Church of England, John Sentamu, the archbishop of York. The two men had staked their authority and prestige on winning support for their proposals, and their failure left the Church of England — and the wider Anglican Communion, with an estimated 80 million followers worldwide — facing a new low in its long battle to avert a breakup that would create two rival Anglican communions, one traditionalist and the other reformist.

The Church of England Synod has at least 10 more hours of debate over the next three days on the terms under which women will be consecrated as bishops — a step that was formally approved two years ago. Women priests have been ordained in the Church of England since 1994 and now represent nearly a third of the church’s working clergy.

Reformers had argued that the latest compromise would reduce women bishops to “second class” status among bishops and would lead to inevitable conflict.

Although the proposals won support from two of the three houses of the Synod, the bishops and the laity, it was narrowly rejected, by a vote of 90 to 85, by the House of Clergy.

As the Synod opened in York, Dr. Sentamu, who was born in Uganda, offered an outspoken defense of the archbishop, who has become an antihero for many traditionalists in the Anglican Communion. He told the Synod that “enough is enough” in the “general disregard for the truth” and “a rapacious appetite for ‘carelessness’ compounded by spin, propaganda and a resort to misleading opinions paraded as fact regarding a remarkable, gifted and much-maligned Christian leader I call a dear friend.”