or EUCHITÆ, 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, προσεύχεσθαι, prayer, whence προσευχή, the same with the Latin precatores, "prayers." They were also called Enthusiasts and Messalians; 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 supplications 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 Lucoperetus, whose chief disciple was named Tychicus. By degrees it became a general and inviolable 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 Alexandrin, 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.
EUHOLOGIUM, Εὐχολογία, a Greek term, signifying literally a discourse on prayer. The word is formed of εὐχή, prayer, and λόγος, discourse.
The Euchologium is properly the Greek ritual, wherein are prescribed the order and manner of every thing. thing relating to the order and administration of their ceremonies, sacraments, ordinations, &c.
F. Goar has given us an edition of the Greek Euchologium in Greek and Latin, with notes, at Paris.
EUCLID of Megara, a celebrated philosopher and logician, flourished about 400 B.C. The Athenians having prohibited the Megareans from entering their city on pain of death, this philosopher disguised himself in women's clothes to attend the lectures of Socrates. After the death of Socrates, Plato and other philosophers went to Euclid at Megara, to shelter themselves from the tyrants who governed Athens. Euclid admitted but one chief good: which he sometimes called God, sometimes Spirit, and sometimes Providence.
Euclid of Alexandria, the celebrated mathematician, flourished in the reign of Ptolemy Lagus, about 277 B.C. He reduced all the fundamental principles of pure mathematics, which had been delivered down by Thales, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, and other mathematicians before him, into regularity and order, and added many others of his own discovering: on which account he is said to be the first who reduced arithmetic and geometry into the form of a science. He likewise applied himself to the study of mixed mathematics, and especially to astronomy, in which he also excelled. The most celebrated of his works is his Elements of Geometry, of which there have been a great number of editions in all languages; and a fine edition of all his works was printed in 1703, by David Gregory, Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford.