Conclusion
When Theodoret published his history, monachism had become a well established phenomenon. Monasteries arose in all countries, the lives of spiritual teachers and founders circulated, rules were established, communal life flourished and hundreds of hermits were found in the countryside. The monk is compared to an athlete in the Olympic games, however he is undertaking spiritual struggle against evil to acquire virtue and achieve Union with the Messiah, the ultimate goal of mysticism.
For Aphrahat, as for Theodoret, mysticism is open to women. Theodoret described women who were well known and clearly identified, while Aphrahat did not consider them separately from the collective of the Daughters of the Covenant[1] , probably in order to show that all the Daughters of the Covenant were virtuous and responded to an ascetic and mystical ideal. He has the merit of being the first to coin the appropriate vocabulary and to paint a picture of the ascetic mystic.
Theodoret pursued another goal, that of demonstrating exemplary models of spiritual teachers who exchanged retreat to the desert for life in the open air, to be precise, in hypethra[2] . He uses many varied examples of ascetic and mystical experience which he employs advisedly to show the originality of Syriac monachism.
