Faillon, Étienne-Michel

FAILLON, ÉTIENNE-MICHEL. - Sulpician, polymath, b. at Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône) on 3 Jan. 1800, d. at Paris on 25 Oct. 1870. Ordained priest on 18 Sept. 1824, he entered the Society of St. Sulpice on 16 Feb. 1825, where among other things he held the offices of Assistant (1842), of visitor of the houses of North America (1849, 1854) and of procurator general in Rome (1864).

He had a surprising capacity for work, as is attested by the 38 works of various kinds that he gave to the press or left in manuscript. The most demanding 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 work of value; 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 vol. is by now superseded, useful instead is the second, which contains the sources relating to the question of the Saints of Provence); Mémoires particuliers pour servir à l'histoire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), of Mlle Monce (ibid. 1854) and of 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, albeit with some defects, and his works are the fruit of immense archival research, to which he continually refers in his citations.