DARBOY, GEORGES. — Archbishop of Paris, born on 16 January 1813 at Fayls-Billot (Haute-Marne), died on 24 May 1871 in Paris.
Ordained a priest in December 1836, he was appointed vicar of the parish of Notre-Dame at S. Dizier. He subsequently taught theology at the major seminary of Langres and published a translation of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, with an interesting introduction. In the autumn of 1845 he moved to Paris, where he became chaplain of the Collège Henri IV. After the archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Affre, was killed in June 1848, his successor, Mgr. Sibour, appointed him honorary vicar general of Paris in 1854 and entrusted him with supreme religious direction of all the educational institutions of the diocese. At his request, D. prepared a report on the condition of the diocese of Paris, to be presented to Pius IX in 1854; it was subsequently published with additions: Statistique religieuse du diocèse de Paris, mémoire sur l'état présent du diocèse (Paris 1856). Elected capitular vicar after Sibour’s assassination, he remained vicar under his successor, Cardinal Morlot; and upon the latter’s death in 1863 he was appointed archbishop of Paris.
When Renan’s Vie de Jésus was published in 1863, D. refuted its errors in his Lenten pastoral letter of 1864. D.’s great pastoral merits were overshadowed by his Gallican sentiments, on account of which he claimed the right to exercise episcopal jurisdiction over exempt religious, thereby earning a reprimand from Pius IX in 1865, to whom he presented his apologies. At the First Vatican Council in 1870 he stood with Dupanloup in the group of the anti-infallibilists and, together with them, left Rome on the eve of the definition; he nevertheless submitted on 2 March 1871. Arrested during the Commune on 4 April as a hostage, he was shot in the prison of Grande-Roquette.
Among his works, the following deserve mention: Les femmes de la Bible, 2 vols., Paris 1846, 8th ed., there 1876; Les saintes femmes, there 1847; S. Thomas Becket, 2 vols., there 1858; Oeuvres pastorales, 2 vols., there 1876.