or EUCHITAE, a sect of ancient heretics, who were first formed into a religious body towards the end of the fourth century, though their doctrine and discipline subsisted in Syria, Egypt, and other eastern countries before the birth of Christ; they were thus called because they prayed without ceasing, imagining that prayer alone was sufficient to save them. Their great foundation were those words of St Paul, (Thessalonians v. 17.), Pray without ceasing. The word is formed of the Greek, εὔχεσθαι prayer, whence εὔχαι, the same with the Latin, precarios, "prayers." They were also called Enthysiai and Mystikai; a term of Hebrew origin, denoting the same as Euchites.

The Euchites were a sort of mystics who imagined, according to the oriental notion, that two souls resided in man, the one good and the other evil; and who were zealous in expelling the evil soul or demon, and hastening the return of the good spirit of God, by contemplation, prayer, and singing of hymns. They also embraced the opinions nearly resembling the Manichean doctrine, and which they derived from the tenets of the oriental philosophy. The same denomination was used in the 12th century, to denote certain fanatics who infested the Greek and Eastern churches, and who were charged with believing a double Trinity, rejecting wedlock, abstaining from flesh, treating with contempt the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, and the various branches of external worship, and placing the essence of religion solely in external prayer, and maintaining the efficacy of perpetual applications to the supreme Being for expelling an evil being or genius, which dwelt in the breast of every mortal. This sect is said to have been founded by a person called Lucoperus, whose chief disciple was named Tychebus. By degrees it became a general and invincible appellation for persons of eminent piety and zeal for genuine Christianity, who opposed the vicious practices and insolent tyranny of the priesthood; much in the same manner as the Latins comprehended all the adversaries of the Roman pontiff under the general terms of Waldenses and Albigenses.

St Cyril of Alexandria, in one of his letters, takes occasion to censure several monks in Egypt, who, under pretence of resigning themselves wholly to prayer, led a lazy, scandalous life. A censure likewise applicable to monasteries in general.