DARBOY, GEORGES. – Archbishop of Paris, b. 16 Jan. 1813 at Fays-Billot (Haute-Marne), d. 24 May 1871 at Paris.
Ordained priest in Dec. 1836, he was appointed vicar of the parish of Notre-Dame at Saint-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 assassination of the Archbishop of Paris, Msgr. Affre, 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 educational institutions in the diocese. For him Darboy prepared a report on the condition 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 vicar capitular after the assassination of Sibour, he remained vicar under Sibour’s successor, Cardinal Morlot; and upon Morlot’s death in 1863 he was named Archbishop of Paris.
After the publication in 1863 of Renan’s Vie de Jésus, Darboy, in his Lenten pastoral of 1864, refuted its errors. His great pastoral merits were, however, overshadowed by Gallican sentiments, which led him to claim the right to exercise episcopal authority over exempt religious, thereby incurring the reproach of Pius IX in 1865, to whom he offered his apologies. At the Vatican Council of 1870 he sided with Dupanloup in the anti-infallibilist group and 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 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.