dress and manners of Turks, and thus secured from the nations of Western Europe the respect and consideration which the Catholics had hitherto always refused to the members of the Greek Church. [458] There is, however, one notable exception to this general good treatment and toleration, viz. the tribute of Christian children, who were forcibly taken from their parents at an early age and enrolled in the famous corps of Janissaries. Instituted by Urkhān in 1330, it formed for centuries the mainstay of the despotic power of the Turkish Sultans, and was kept alive by a regular contribution exacted every four years, [459] when the officers of the Sultan visited the districts on which the tax was imposed, and made a selection from among the children about the age of seven. The Muhammadan legists attempted to apologise for this inhuman tribute by representing these children as the fifth of the spoil which the Qurʼān assigns to the sovereign, [460] and they prescribed that the injunction against forcible conversion [461] should be observed with regard to them also, although the tender age at which they were placed under the instruction of Muslim teachers must have made it practically of none effect. [462] Christian Europe has always expressed its horror at such a barbarous tax, and travellers in the Turkish dominions have painted touching pictures of desolated homes and of parents weeping for the children torn from their arms. But when the corps was first instituted, its numbers were rapidly swelled by voluntary accessions from among the Christians themselves, [463] and the circumstances under which this tribute was first imposed may go far to explain the apathy which the Greeks themselves appear to have exhibited. The whole country had been laid waste by war, and families were often in danger of perishing with hunger; the children who were thus adopted were in many cases orphans, who would otherwise have been left to perish; further, the custom so widely prevalent at that time of selling Christians as slaves may have made this tax appear less appalling than might have been expected. This custom has, moreover, been maintained to have been only a continuation of a similar usage that was in force under the Byzantine emperors. [464] It has even been said that there was seldom any necessity of an appeal to force on the part of the officers who collected the appointed number of children, but rather that the parents were often eager to have their children enrolled in a service that secured for them in many cases a brilliant career, and under any circumstances a well-cared-for and comfortable existence, since these little captives were brought up and educated as if they were the Sultan’s own children. [465] This institution appears in a less barbarous light if it be true that the parents could often redeem their children by a money payment. [466] Metrophanes Kritopoulos, who was Patriarch of Constantinople and afterwards of