Pedomazoma was the heaviest blood toll a nation was called upon to pay during foreign occupation. This is because his goal was not only to weaken the defeated but to strengthen the winner.
Paedomazoma only sick brains like the Turks could have conceived as nothing similar, to this extent, has ever happened in history. Opinions differ as to when child molestation began. Giannis Kordatos places it in the last quarter of the 13th century. A.D. Other sources identify its beginning in 1362 under Sultan Murat A.
Initiation, Periodicity, Rapture
The historian of the genus Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos connects it with the formation of the janissary body and places its beginning in the time of Sultan Orhan, specifically around 1326 AD
It seems that child molestation did indeed begin during Orhan's reign, but was systematized during Murat's reign. The children being recruited were Christian children aged 8-20. Armenians and Jews were excluded from conscription.
Under Muhammed II, a paedomazoma was held every 5 years. Later, however, it took place every 4, or even less depending on the needs of the respective sultan. Children from areas where a relative privilege had been granted, but which could later be removed, were excluded from the pedomazoma.
In theory, orphans, married people, and single children were also excluded. For this reason parents often married off their children at a very young age. But the exceptions were usually there to be trampled upon and the Turkish officials responsible for collecting the children rarely respected them as the above children were sold into slavery and reaped the profits.
K. Paparrigopoulos writes in this regard:"... and marriage in childhood was completely useless because married people were also taken and not only at an age when marriage could not be considered worthwhile, but also up to 20 and 24 years".
Any attempt by the parents to prevent the abduction of their child was punishable by death. The Turkish official in charge went from village to village and asked the priest for the lists of the ragiads. He listened to the names, the number and the age of the children and decided arbitrarily.
Apostolos Vakalopoulos mentions, in the History of New Hellenism:"In the area... where the child molestation would take place, they would send an officer of the janissaries who had the relevant conscription firman, a scribe and some accompanying janissaries. This officer had absolute authority and no one had the right to interfere with his duties... his arrival was announced by heralds in the villages.
"In each place he consulted first with the kadi and the provost or the priest and then he checked... the birth books of the church and inspected the candidates himself... He chose the most handsome, handsome and intelligent young people who seemed suitable..." . The children were first taken to the City where they were circumcised and their conversion to Islam began.
Number of children, their education
No one knows the number of Christian children who were abducted. A Turkish source of the 16th century speaks of 200,000 children by then. Austrian historian of the 19th century. speaks of 500,000 children while K. Paparrigopoulos mentions 1,000,000 children. The French historian La Vallée speaks of 5,000,000 children.
This is how the envoy of the German emperor, the Czech noble Vaslav Vratislav von Mitrovic, describes the child molestation in 1591:"The janissaries in question are for the most part persons who have been converted or children of living Christians...
“Hundreds of them gather every third year after their male children are 8, 9 or 10 years old. There are doctors on site judging the mental capacity of each child... Those who promise more are sent to the service of the Turkish sultan, the others to the service of other officials, and the rest are sold to the East or Asia.
"They are kept there until the age of 18 or 20 and are brought up with deprivation, hunger... they are treated a little better than dogs... Around the age of 20 they were transferred to Constantinople and the most active were recorded as janissaries and placed under old janissaries to learn to fight... In case of battle they march in the vanguard... From them come the bravest and fiercest warriors of the Turks".>
But not all children ended up janissaries. The most suitable ones were intended for the direct service of the sultan. Many of them reached very high positions.
The "dead" child
The first historical record of paedomazoma comes from the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki Isidoros and dates back to 1395. Even the term paedomazoma was first used in 1675. Previously it was called "genital".
"Curse you, king, and thrice curse you,
with evil you burn, and the evil you do.
You send, you bind the elders, the first priests
Making child abuse, making janissaries.
Parents cry for children, and sisters for brothers,
I cry too and I burn and as long as I live I will cry.
Last year they took my yoka, this year my brother»
This was mentioned in a related folk song of the time. But as always there were also the opportunists, or simply those who wanted their child to have a better future than the broken parents themselves. They willingly gave their children. But they were the few.
For many, the abduction of the child was tantamount to death. For this reason, after the rapture, the funeral procession of the child alive but lost to the nation, parents and Orthodoxy was held.
Mentions another folk song:
“Bring the widow the child who is literate.
And they went and brought him 'through' from Agios Vima, with the wool untied, with the paper in his hands.
His mother also goes close, close pleading
What is the evil that has happened to me, poor thing?
In the first genocide they took my brother, in the second my husband and now my healthy one" .
The woman after the rapture of her husband is called a widow...
Such was the terror of the parents that letters from the Greeks of Asia Minor have been preserved asking the Knights of St. John in Rhodes to take them to their lands to save their children.
Pedomazoma is recorded for the last time in 1705 in Naoussa. However, it was prevented due to an uprising of the residents. The main reason for its abolition was the hostility of the Turks who saw converts to Islam, even Christians, rising to the highest offices.