DARBOY, GEORGES. - Archbishop of Paris, b. 16 Jan. 1813 at Fayls-Billot (Haute-Marne), d. 24 May 1871 in Paris.
Ordained a priest in Dec. 1836, he was appointed vicar of the parish of Notre-Dame in St. Dizier. He then 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 almoner of the Collège Henri IV. After the Archbishop of Paris, Msgr. Affre, was killed in June 1848, his successor Msgr. Sibour in 1854 appointed him honorary vicar general of Paris and entrusted him with the supreme religious direction of all the educational institutions of the diocese. For him D. drew up a report on the conditions of the diocese of Paris to be presented to Pius IX in 1854, which was later published with additions: Statistique religieuse du diocèse de Paris, mémoire sur l'état présent du diocèse (Paris 1856). Elected capitular vicar after the assassination of Sibour, he remained vicar under his successor, Card. Morlot; and on the latter's death in 1863 he was appointed Archbishop of Paris.
After the publication in 1863 of Renan's Vie de Jésus, D. refuted its errors in his Lenten pastoral of 1864. D.'s great pastoral merits were overshadowed by his Gallican sentiments, by which he claimed to be able to exercise episcopal rights over exempt religious, earning the reproach of Pius IX in 1865, to whom he offered his apologies. At the Vatican Council of 1870 he stood together with Dupanloup in the group of the anti-infallibilists and with them left Rome on the eve of the definition; he submitted, however, on 2 March 1871. Arrested during the Commune, on 4 Apr., as a hostage, he was shot in the prison of the Grande-Roquette.
Among his works are to be noted: Les femmes de la Bible, 2 vols., Paris 1846, 8th ed., ibid. 1876; Les saintes femmes, ibid. 1847; S. Thomas Becket, 2 vols., ibid. 1858; Oeuvres pastorales, 2 vols., ibid. 1876.
Bibliography3 works
Silvio Furlani