• Source: Georges Darboy

Georges Darboy (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ daʁbwa]; 16 January 1813 – 24 May 1871) was a French Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Nancy then Archbishop of Paris. He was among a group of prominent hostages executed as the Paris Commune of 1871 was about to be overthrown.




Biography


Darboy was born in Fayl-Billot, Haute-Marne in north-east France. He studied with distinction at the seminary at Langres, and was ordained priest in 1836. Transferred to Paris as almoner of the college of Henry IV, and honorary canon of Notre Dame, he became the close friend of Archbishop Affre and of his successor Archbishop Sibour. He was appointed bishop of Nancy in 1859, and in January 1863 was raised to the archbishopric of Paris.
Darboy was a strenuous upholder of episcopal independence in the Gallican sense, and involved himself in a controversy with Rome by his endeavours to suppress the jurisdiction of the Jesuits and other religious orders within his diocese. Pope Pius IX refused him the cardinal's hat, and rebuked him for his liberalism in a letter which was probably not intended for publication. He is also known for his opposition in 1868 to Jacques-Paul Migne, forbidding him to continue his low-cost books business after the burning of his printing establishment, and suspending him from his priestly functions. At the First Vatican Council he vigorously maintained the rights of the bishops, and strongly opposed the dogma of papal infallibility, against which he voted as inopportune. When the dogma had been finally adopted, however, he was one of the first to set the example of submission.




= Commune and Execution

=
Immediately after his return to Paris the war with Prussia broke out, and his conduct during the disastrous year that followed was marked by a devoted heroism which has secured for him an enduring fame. He was active in organizing relief for the wounded at the commencement of the war, remained at his post during the siege, and refused to seek safety by flight during the brief triumph of the Paris Commune. On 4 April 1871, he was arrested by the Communards as a hostage and confined in Mazas Prison. The Communards offered to exchange him and several priests for Louis Auguste Blanqui, who was being held by the Versailles government. He was transferred to La Roquette Prisons on the advance of the Versailles army, and on 24 May he was shot within the prison along with several other prominent hostages. The execution was ordered by Théophile Ferré, who later was executed by firing squad by the French government after the fall of the Commune.




Legacy


Darboy died in the attitude of blessing and uttering words of forgiveness. His body was recovered with difficulty, and, having been embalmed, was buried with imposing ceremony at public expense on 7 June. He was the third archbishop of Paris to die violently between 1848 and 1871 after Denis Auguste Affre (killed 1848) and Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour (assassinated in 1857).
A cause for the beatification of Darboy and the other hostages was formally opened on 16 March 1937, granting them the title of Servants of God.




Works


Œuvres de Saint Denys l'Aréopagite (1845).
Les Femmes de la Bible (1846–1849).
Les Saintes Femmes (1850).
Lettres à Combalot (1851).
Jérusalem et la Terre Sainte (1852).
L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ (1852).
Statistique Religieuse du Diocèse de Paris (1856).
Saint Thomas Becket (1858).
Du Gouvernement de Soi-même (1867).




See also


List of works by Eugène Guillaume
Raoul Rigault




References






Further reading


Baisnée, Jules A. “The French Clergy in the Nineteenth Century.” The Catholic Historical Review 23, no. 2 (1937): 185–204. [1].
Gibbons, James Card. “Personal Reminiscences of the Vatican Council.” The North American Review 158, no. 449 (1894): 385–400. [2].
Horne, Alistair (2012). The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–71. Picador. OCLC 922079975.
Horvath-Peterson, Sandra (1982). "Abbé Georges Darboy's 'Statistique Religieuse du Diocèse de Paris' (1856)," The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 3, pp. 401–450.
Katz, Philip M. (1994). "'Lessons from Paris': The American Clergy Responds to the Paris Commune," Church History, Vol. 63, No. 3, pp. 393–406.
Parsons, Reuben (1901). "The Clerical Victims of the Commune of 1871." In: Studies in Church History, Vol. VI. New York: Fr. Pustet & Co., pp. 85–110.
Price, Lewis C. (1915). Archbishop Darboy and Some French Tragedies, 1813-1871. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred (1914). My Adventures in the Commune, Paris, 1871. London: Chatto & Windus.




External links



Works by or about Georges Darboy at the Internet Archive
Works by Georges Darboy, at Hathi Trust

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• André Vingt-Trois
• François-Nicholas-Madeleine Morlot
• Keuskupan Agung Paris
• Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel
• Jean-Marie Lustiger
• Georges Darboy
• Darboy
• Paris Commune
• Karl Josef von Hefele
• Théophile Ferré
• Semaine sanglante
• Darboy, Wisconsin
• Georges (name)
• Jacques Paul Migne
• Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paris