Flavian was a Monk under the Rule of St Basil at the Monastery of Tilmognon and later became an apocrisiarius.
After the death of Palladius in 498, Flavian was appointed by Emperor Anastasius I as Patriarch of Antioch on the condition that he accepted the Henotikon.
In 511, Philoxenus convinced Monophysites of the surrounding Syrian countryside to storm Antioch and force Flavian to condemn the Council of Chalcedon but was met by fierce Chalcedonians who slaughtered the attackers and dumped their bodies into the River Orontes.
These events drove Anastasius to adopt a Miaphysite ecclesiastical programme and thus Flavian and Elias lost imperial support.
[citation needed] A synod was convened in Sidon in 512 by Philoxenus and eighty other non-Chalcedonian bishops, with the support of Anastasius, to condemn Flavian and Elias and as a result he was deposed and banished to Petra, where he died in 518.