The Wonders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather
I have a history of the Salem witch trials queued up, and this document is one of its most frequently cited sources. It’s a revisit for me, since I read it ages ago in a graduate-level American lit class.
The Mathers were an important family in Colonial Massachusetts. The son of Increase Mather, Cotton was a Harvard-educated Puritan theologian, author, and community leader. He took a leading role in Boston’s bloodless rebellion against the newly appointed governor Edmund Andros. In 1691 this led to a change in governors and a revision in the charter of the Massachusetts Bay colony, combining it with the Plymouth Colony to create the Province of Massachusetts. Important social/religious alteration: Instead of remaining a Puritan* colony, the new Province was required to tolerate all religions.
When the witch mania broke out in Salem Village**, resulting in 200+ accusations of witchcraft and 19 executions** of convicted witches, the situation was already touchy for a Puritan minister. Cotton had no political power and not much religious power in Salem Village, but he was keenly interested in the supposed “horrible outbreak” of Satanism in Massachusetts. Wonders is his justification for the persecution of supposed witches. Like other New England theologians, he feared that the authority of the Congregational church was faltering.
It seems pretty clear that the accusers were motivated as much by socioeconomic divisions as by religious belief. However, Mather firmly believed that the devil was a real, physical being, that before European colonization Satan rulef the New World, that he recruited evildoers to combat (specifically) Puritans, and that the trials and executions were called for. The booklet cites Scripture, other works on witchcraft (often maddeningly not identified by title or author), and history to support Mather’s position. He often veers into fatuity, writing about a crow that spoke to people who doubted the existence of witchcraft: “Read Colossians III!” He was in Salem Village when minister George Burroughs was hanged for witchcraft (the evidence was that he was physically a strong man), despite his passing the classic witch-test of being able to recite the Lord’s Prayer without error or pause. When the crowd was swayed by this, Mather argued vehemently that the classic test proved nothing, and Burroughs was hanged. Concerning another accused witch, Mather argues that she was undoubtedly guilty because she could not speak English (she was Irish Gaelic) and that she was a Papist. Case closed.
To his credit, Mather does write that he doubted the validity of spectral evidence, the claims of witnesses that the accused person appeared in spirit to them, though invisible to everyone else. However, when in 1711 Salem Village posthumously pardoned the victims, formally apologized, and promised monetary restitution to the surviving families, Mather adamantly would refuse to back down. The work is bathed in a kind of heightened piety, rings with self-righteousness, and shows just how the “us against Them” mentality can result in tragefy.
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*Called Separatists in England, the Puritans created the Congregationalist denomination in 1648. Both Increase and Cotton served as pastors of the Boston North Congregational Church, a different one from the later Old North Church, which was CoE.
**Salem Village was a suburb of Salem Town and today is called Danvers.
***Nineteen men and women from Salem Village were hanged (none burned) and one, Giles Corey, died under torture applied because he refused to enter a plea.
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