20 Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
Sonya Parrish
Introduction
Born in Boston in 1663, Cotton Mather was the son of Increase Mather and the grandson of Richard Mather and John Cotton. This legacy of famous Puritan ministers and community leaders shaped Mather’s life and was the driving force behind many of his achievements. Encouraged in his early education and dedication to Puritanism by his father, he entered Harvard at age 12 and graduated with a BA and MA in 1678 at the age of 15. Ordained in 1685, he became the pastor of Second Church of Boston where he remained until his death. Often viewed as an aggressive, vain genius by his contemporaries, he had a stutter from childhood to early adulthood and suffered from various nervous conditions in his life. He lost three wives to death or insanity in his lifetime, and of the fifteen children he fathered only two survived to his death. Despite tragedies and controversy, he published over 400 works in his lifetime and is today seen as one of the most influential religious and historical writers from the seventeenth-century Puritan community.
Mather’s prolific writing career was matched by his willingness to explore all issues he felt impacted his Puritan community. He was a minister, historian, natural scientist, and prolific writer. He openly criticized the slave trade and encouraged the new science of smallpox inoculation while simultaneously endorsing the use of spectral evidence in trials of witchcraft and encouraging the mass destruction of the Native American population in New England. He was vilified later in his life for his endorsement of the Salem Witch Trials, although he did not personally participate in the proceedings. His writing, both historical and religious, hearkened back to the Puritan underpinnings of New England and worked to preserve Puritan theocracy in a community he viewed as becoming more concerned with secular political and social issues. More stylistically ornate than many of his contemporaries, Mather’s writing was also consistently thoughtful and effective in its use of rhetoric. No matter the subject, Mather showed a vast knowledge and deft use of language in all his work. Like previous authors in this anthology, such as William Bradford and John Winthrop, his Puritanism dominates his writing, and his admiration and reverence for such early colonial leaders is echoed throughout his life and writing.
The following excerpts come from two of his works, Wonders of the Invisible World and Decennium Luctuosum. Wonders of the Invisible World, first published in 1693, is Mather’s infamous defense of the Salem Witch Trials. During these trials, which lasted from February 1692 to May 1693 in the towns of Salem Town, Salem Village, Ipswich, and Andover in the Massachusetts colony, one hundred forty-four people were brought before the court, fifty-four confessed to witchcraft, nineteen were hanged, one man was pressed to death by heavy stones, and two dogs were executed — the community l