FAILLON, ETIENNE-MICHEL. — Sulpician, polymath, born at Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône) on 3 January 1800, died in Paris on 25 October 1870. Ordained a priest on 18 September 1824, he entered the Society of S. Sulpice on 16 February 1825, where, among other positions, he held those of Assistant (1842), visitor of the houses of North America (1849, 1854), and procurator general in Rome (1864).
He possessed a remarkable capacity for work, as is demonstrated by the 38 works of various kinds that he published or left in manuscript. The most substantial are: Matériaux pour la vie de M. Emery, 13 vols. in-fol. mss., first-hand material for the history of the well-known Sulpician; Vie de M. Olier, fond. du Sém. de St-Sulpice (2 vols., Paris 1841; 4th ed., 3 vols., ibid. 1873), a valuable work; Monuments inédits sur l'apostolat de Ste Marie Madeleine en Provence et sur les autres opétres de cette contrée et Lazare, et Maximin, ste Marthe, les stes Marie Jacobé et Salomé (2 vols., ibid. 1848, 2nd printing ibid. 1859; the first volume is now outdated, while the second is useful because it contains the sources
relating to the question of the Saints of Provence); Mémoires particuliers pour servir à l'histoire de l'Église de l'Amérique du Nord, which contains the Vie de la Sœur Bourgeois (Paris-Villamario 1853), de Mlle Monce (ibid. 1854), and de Mme d'Youville (ibid. 1852), excellent biographies; Histoire de la Colonie française en Canada (3 vols., Paris 1865-66), a work that occupied an eminent place in Canadian historiography. As a historian he is honest, despite some shortcomings, and his works are the fruit of immense archival research, to which he continually refers in the citations.