Euchaita (Εὐχάϊτα) was a Byzantine city and diocese in Helenopontus, the Armeniac Theme (northern Asia Minor), and an important stop on the Ancyra-Amasea Roman road.
[1] Euchaita gained prominence during the later Roman and Byzantine periods as a significant cultic center for the veneration of Anatolian saint Theodore Tiron.
Today the Turkish village Beyözü, in the Anatolian province of Çorum (in the subprovince of Mecitözü, Turkey), partly lies on the ruins.
Euchaita, in the Roman province of Helenopontus (civil diocese of Pontus) is known mostly due to its role as a major pilgrimage site dedicated to Saint Theodore of Amasea (martyred c. 306).
[3] It became an autocephalous archbishopric in the early 7th century,[3] as attested by the Notitia Episcopatuum edition of pseudo-Epiphanius, from the reign of Byzantine emperor Heraclius I (circa 640).
By the 16th century, under Ottoman rule, the settlement of Avkat was largely abandoned but there was a dervish lodge or zawiya dedicated to a sufi named Elwan Çelebi on what were presumably the remnants of the church of St.
[6] When German traveller Hans Dernschwam visited the site in the 1550s, he noted that the dervishes cultivated a remnant of the worship of St. Theodore as the dragon slayer, under the name of Khidr-Ilya.