PHILOXENUS (Syriac, Aksenaya) (fl. c. zoo) of Mabbog, one of the best of Syriac prose writers, and a vehement cham pion of Monophysite doctrine. He was by birth a Persian, born at TOO, in the district of Beth Garmai east of the Tigris. He was educated at Edessa. Philoxenus soon attracted notice by his strenuous advocacy of Monophysite doctrine, and on the expul sion of Calandio (the orthodox patriarch of Antioch) in 485 was ordained bishop of MabbOg (Hierapolis) by his Monophysite suc cessor Peter the Fuller (Barhebraeus, Chron. eccl. i. 183). It was probably during the earlier years of his episcopate that Philoxenus composed his thirteen homilies on the Christian life. Later he revised the Syriac version of the Bible, and with the help of his chorepiscopus Polycarp produced in 508 the so-called Philoxenian version, used by the Monophysites during the 6th century. He
bitterly opposed Flavian II., who had accepted the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon and was patriarch of Antioch from 498 to 512. In 512 the Monophysites finally ousted and replaced him by their partisan Severus. But Justin I., who succeeded Anastasius in 518, was less favourable to Severus and Philoxenus, and in 519 they were sentenced to banishment. Philoxenus was sent to Philip popolis in Thrace, and afterwards to Gangra in Paphlagonia, where he met his death by foul play in 523.
Of the chief monument of his scholarship—the Philoxenian version of the Bible—only the Gospels and certain portions of Isaiah are known to survive (see Wright, Syr. Lit. His thirteen homilies on the Christian life and character have been edited and translated by Budge (London, 1894). Many of his letters survive.