Cotton Mather and Mass Panic
September 2, 2015 3:08 AM Subscribe
Cotton Mather's career is defined by two episodes of mass panic. In 1721 he found himself the target of public anger in Boston when he advocated for small pox inoculation after inoculating his own children on the advice of his West African slave, Onesimus. Three decades earlier, in 1692, he was one of the instigators and defenders of the Salem Witch Trials. For more on the latter, visit the comprehensive Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive (previously).
Hey, that's where I work! The Danvers Archival Center is currently closed for a bit, otherwise I'd try to lure some Mefites out to see some of those original documents in person.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:26 AM on September 2, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:26 AM on September 2, 2015 [10 favorites]
This article on Onesimus gives more information about him.
posted by Kattullus at 4:19 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Kattullus at 4:19 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
I dunno; it's not my area, but my impression (largely gathered from Carol Karlsen's thorough and entertaining The Devil in the Shape of a Woman) is that Mather was one of the voices of reason -- he believed in witches (like pretty much everyone else), but he demanded fairly high burdens of proof and denounced practices like "spectral evidence" which was easily abused (and heavily on show at Salem Village).
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:47 AM on September 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:47 AM on September 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
Records and files of courts of Essex County
An interesting correlation. Most of the New England immigrants to Cotton Mather's colony came from East Anglia. Good stats and maps in Albion's Seed. The majority of English witch persecutions were in East Anglia. Keith Wrightson's Yale History Early Modern England lesson 14 Witchcraft and Magic.
posted by bukvich at 6:53 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
An interesting correlation. Most of the New England immigrants to Cotton Mather's colony came from East Anglia. Good stats and maps in Albion's Seed. The majority of English witch persecutions were in East Anglia. Keith Wrightson's Yale History Early Modern England lesson 14 Witchcraft and Magic.
posted by bukvich at 6:53 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
Oh, but the way, when I say that Karlsen's book is "entertaining," I mean for historians who like some light statistical analysis. It is a very compelling examination of the characteristics shared by people accused of witchcraft in the colonies and goes a long way to identifying how witchcraft accusations tie in with social and economic anxieties. An interested lay person can easily read it (I managed it, and I an no expert on 17th C Colonial history), but don't expect thrill-a-minute narratives.
What really strands out is how different the Salem event was from the "background noise" of witchcraft belief, and how those differences pretty much broke the idea of witchcraft prosecutions as a useful (and even necessary) social practice.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:00 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
What really strands out is how different the Salem event was from the "background noise" of witchcraft belief, and how those differences pretty much broke the idea of witchcraft prosecutions as a useful (and even necessary) social practice.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:00 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
How one could steal a person's entire life and then call the victim a thief is beyond me. Mather is lucky that "Onesimus" didn't cut his throat for his sin.
posted by 1adam12 at 7:02 AM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by 1adam12 at 7:02 AM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's actually pretty shocking that both these three-hundred-year-old forma of mass panic have returned in our day: witch trials, anti-vaccination. History doesn't have a smooth upward curve, it jolts up and down, and sometimes I'm not sure it's actually trending anywhere at all.
posted by languagehat at 8:04 AM on September 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by languagehat at 8:04 AM on September 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yeah, at this point, I think the Whig historians are pretty clearly disproved. Progress is halting, at best.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:21 AM on September 2, 2015
posted by Chrysostom at 8:21 AM on September 2, 2015
Heh. Cotton is a 7th great grand-uncle of mine. I am descended through his brother, Timothy, "the farmer", called that because he didn't enter the clergy.
They truly lived in interesting times.
posted by disclaimer at 8:31 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
They truly lived in interesting times.
posted by disclaimer at 8:31 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
I love this post, but I wouldn't say that Cotton Mather was defined by these two episodes, though they may be the events in his life that speak most directly to us in the 21st century, and though he seems often to come up in everyday reference as (quoting a couple of Mather scholars) "the Puritan everybody loves to hate" and "America's national gargoyle."
His writings, over 400 in all (including Magnalia Christi Americana, which one 19th-century critic called "a chaotick mass of history, biography, obsolete creeds, witchcraft, and Indian wars, interspersed with bad puns, and numerous quotations in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which rise up like so many decayed, hideous stumps to arrest the eye and deform the surface") -- and his larger-than-life role in colonial society and the development of American values, for better or worse -- are what define him.
posted by blucevalo at 8:38 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
His writings, over 400 in all (including Magnalia Christi Americana, which one 19th-century critic called "a chaotick mass of history, biography, obsolete creeds, witchcraft, and Indian wars, interspersed with bad puns, and numerous quotations in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which rise up like so many decayed, hideous stumps to arrest the eye and deform the surface") -- and his larger-than-life role in colonial society and the development of American values, for better or worse -- are what define him.
posted by blucevalo at 8:38 AM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
“Spectral evidence” is one of my favorite ideas, mostly because it's so plainly a dodge:
“I saw Goody Proctor speaking with the devil yesterday at sunset! She saw me, spoke to me words I didn't understand, and I've been speaking in tongues ever since!”
“That's impossible; Goody Proctor was elsewhere at sunset, and ten people saw her.”
“…oh. Well. Maybe it was her spirit?”
The idea can only take hold in a person who thinks it’s more likely for evil spirits to exist than that someone they know might be lying. In modern times, we never give testimony the same weight as evidence, even if we can be certain the witness is being truthful. Yet even Mather’s urged caution with regard to spectral evidence came from a belief that the witness was misled (the devil can play tricks), not that the witness is misleading others.
The certitude of Puritanism, in Salem’s case, left no room for the “what if we’re wrong” instinct. When concrete evidence cannot exist, when simple testimony is enough to execute someone, only a system that proceeds with absolute belief in its own perfection can punish people for the crime of witchcraft.
posted by savetheclocktower at 9:28 AM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
“I saw Goody Proctor speaking with the devil yesterday at sunset! She saw me, spoke to me words I didn't understand, and I've been speaking in tongues ever since!”
“That's impossible; Goody Proctor was elsewhere at sunset, and ten people saw her.”
“…oh. Well. Maybe it was her spirit?”
The idea can only take hold in a person who thinks it’s more likely for evil spirits to exist than that someone they know might be lying. In modern times, we never give testimony the same weight as evidence, even if we can be certain the witness is being truthful. Yet even Mather’s urged caution with regard to spectral evidence came from a belief that the witness was misled (the devil can play tricks), not that the witness is misleading others.
The certitude of Puritanism, in Salem’s case, left no room for the “what if we’re wrong” instinct. When concrete evidence cannot exist, when simple testimony is enough to execute someone, only a system that proceeds with absolute belief in its own perfection can punish people for the crime of witchcraft.
posted by savetheclocktower at 9:28 AM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
Interesting article, and now I have to reconsider my attitude towards Cotton Mather. Thanks for the post.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:38 AM on September 2, 2015
posted by benito.strauss at 9:38 AM on September 2, 2015
Cotton Mather is one of the people who came up with the idea that became the pre-Tribulation Rapture.
posted by larrybob at 12:55 PM on September 2, 2015
posted by larrybob at 12:55 PM on September 2, 2015
So you're saying that, based on Cotton Mather's involvement in both issues, the anti-vaccine movement is all witches. Now tell me something I didn't already know.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:02 PM on September 2, 2015
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:02 PM on September 2, 2015
It's actually pretty shocking that both these three-hundred-year-old forma of mass panic have returned in our day:
I think a better example of modern witch trials was McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:04 PM on September 2, 2015
I think a better example of modern witch trials was McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:04 PM on September 2, 2015
GenjiandProust, it was Cotton Mather's father, Increase Mather, who of the two ministers was the more reasonable in regard to the use of "spectral evidence," etc. in the trials.
posted by obloquy at 2:42 PM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by obloquy at 2:42 PM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
> I think a better example of modern witch trials was McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
I disagree. That was, of course, routinely referred to as a "witch hunt," and the analogy is vaguely applicable, but it fails in a vitally important respect: there actually were American communists, and they actually did want to overthrow the government and Sovietize the country. They were (and are) a tiny, impotent minority that it made no sense to worry about, and persecuting them (and anyone who could be lumped in with them) hurt the country far more than they could have, but they were not made up. The Satanic day care scare, on the other hand, was an exact match for the witch trials.
posted by languagehat at 1:02 PM on September 3, 2015
I disagree. That was, of course, routinely referred to as a "witch hunt," and the analogy is vaguely applicable, but it fails in a vitally important respect: there actually were American communists, and they actually did want to overthrow the government and Sovietize the country. They were (and are) a tiny, impotent minority that it made no sense to worry about, and persecuting them (and anyone who could be lumped in with them) hurt the country far more than they could have, but they were not made up. The Satanic day care scare, on the other hand, was an exact match for the witch trials.
posted by languagehat at 1:02 PM on September 3, 2015
I am pretty sure the Mathers, father and son, were, at the very least, dubious about Spectral Evidence (although because the Devil could fake it rather than because it was ridiculous).
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:25 PM on September 4, 2015
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:25 PM on September 4, 2015
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posted by Kattullus at 3:09 AM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]