The Ascetic Discourses and Three Letters of Philoxenus of Mabbugh

Philoxenus (Syriac, Aksenaya) of Mabbog (died 523), was one of the best of Syriac prose writers, and a vehement champion of the Anti-Chalcedonian doctrine in the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th centuries. The years which followed the Council of Chalcedon were a stormy period in the Syrian Church. Philoxenus soon attracted notice by his strenuous advocacy of Non-Chalcedonian doctrine, and on the expulsion of Calandio in 485 was ordained bishop of Mabbog by his Non-Chalcedonian successor Peter the Fuller . It was probably during the earlier years of his episcopate that Philoxenus composed his thirteen discourses on the Christian life.