Audo, Toma (1855–1918) [Chald.]

Bp., lexicographer, and translator into Syriac.

Bp., lexicographer, and translator into Syriac. He was born in Alqosh of Qasha Hirmiz bar Michael who was the brother of Patr. Yawsep Audo. Audo’s brother Israel Audo became the bp. of Mardin . After completing his elementary studies in Alqosh, his uncle the patr. took him to Rome where Audo joined the college of Congregatio de Propaganda Fide from 1869 to 1880. He was ordained a priest in 1880 and returned to Mosul where he served under his uncle’s successor Patr. Eliya ʿAbū al-Yūnan. He later served as patriarchal vicar to Aleppo in 1882 for four years, after which he returned to Mosul to take charge of the Seminary of St. John . He was consecrated bp. of Urmia and Salamas in 1892, and participated in the Synod that elected Patr. ʿAbdishoʿ Khayyāṭ in 1894. During the persecutions that occurred during World War I, he protected and provided shelter to many refugees, only to become a victim himself when he was assassinated, along with other priests and parishioners, on 27 July 1918.

Audo produced a Syriac-Syriac lexicon entitled Simta d-leššāna suryāyā / *Dictionnaire de la langue chaldéenne *(2 vols.; Mosul, 1897–1901); a grammar of Swadaya (i.e., colloquial) Neo-Aramaic entitled Gramaṭiqi d-leššānā swādāyā / Grammaire de la langue chaldéenne moderne. Dialecte d-Ourmiah (Urmia, 1905; 2nd ed. 1911); and a liturgy for the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, published by Bedjan in Breviarium Chaldaicum, vol. 3 (Paris, 1886–7). He translated the following works from Latin into Syriac: P. Scavini’s Theologia moralis ad mentem S. Alphonsi M. de Ligorio (2 vols.; Urmia, 1899, 1900); Catechismus Romanus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini (The Catechism of the Council of Trent) (Mosul, 1889); Nieremberg’s La Balance du Temps (Mosul, date unknown); and Louis Togni’s Instructio pro sacris Ecclesiae ministris (French title *Instruction pour les ministres de l’Église *; Mosul, 1895). He also translated from Arabic into Syriac the fables of Kalila and Dimna (French title Kalila et Dimna fables indiennes; Mosul, 1895). He also revised a translation into Syriac, made by the Chald. monk Damyanos of Alqosh (d. 1858), of an Arabic version of Paolo Segneri’s Manuale Sacerdotum (Mosul, 1882; 2nd ed. 1893).