Euchaita was a Roman and Byzantine town and bishopric in northern Asia Minor. It was identified with modern Avhat. Today the Turkish village Beyözü, in the Anatolian province of Çorum, partly lies on the ruins.
History
Euchaita, in the Roman province of Helenopontus, and became a major pilgrimage site after his remains were moved there from neighbouring Amasea. Its episcopal see was originally a suffragan of the Metropolitan of the provincial capital Amasea, in the sway of patriarchate of Constantinople. In the 5th century, the town was a favourite site of exile for disgraced senior churchmen. In 515, the unfortified town was sacked by a Hunnic raid, after which it was rebuilt, fortified and raised to the status of a city by Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I. The city was later burned down by the Sassanid Persians in 615, and attacked by the Arabs under second Umayyad Caliph Mu'awiya I in 640. A second Arab attack captured the city in 663; the raiders plundered the city, destroyed the church of St. Theodore, and wintered there, while the population fled to fortified refuges in the surrounding countryside. It became an autocephalous archbishopric in the early 7th century, as attested by the Notitia Episcopatuum edition of pseudo-Epiphanius, from the reign of Byzantine emperorHeraclius I. The city was rebuilt and soon recovered. The Arabs scored a victory in its vicinity in 810, taking captive the localstrategos of the Armeniac Theme and his entire treasury. It became a full metropolitan see under Leo VI the Wise and Patriarch Photius of Constantinople, ranking 51st among the Metropolitanates of the Patriarchate, with four suffragan sees : Gazala, Koutziagra, Sibiktos and Bariané, but apparently lost them all no later than the tenth century. In 972, Emperor John I Tzimiskes renamed the neighbouring Euchaneia, whose exact relation or identity with Euchaita is unclear, into Theodoropolis. The town is recorded as having a vibrant fair during the festival of St. Theodore in the middle of the 11th century, but its history thereafter is unknown.
The archbishopric was nominally restored in 1922 as Latin Titular archbishopric of Eucaita. In 1925 it was demoted as Titular bishopric of Eucaita, but before another incumbent could take possession it was in 1929 again promoted as Titular Archiepiscopal See, now under the names Euchaitæ / Eucaita / Euchaiten. It is vacant since decades, having had the following incumbents, of the fitting archiepiscopal rank : BIOS TO ELABORATE
