Talk:Cotton Mather

Issues
Why was the content added about Mather and Slavery deleted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcommeyras (talk • contribs) 07:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Well written article. I dont have time right now to do an edit, but I would like to point out 3 more things about Mather:


 * 1. His scientific work got him elected to the Royal society.


 * 2. Ben Franklin cited Mather as a positive influence on his own life.


 * Mike091020 (talk) 14:09, 20 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, Franklin cited only one of Cotton Mathers books "Essays to Do Good". He did not say, as a blanket statement, that Mather was "a positive influence on his own life".  I think it pays to be accurate where possible.  In Franklin's case it is  possible to be accurate as he was a prolific writer and left a very big trail of his thoughts.  From his autobiography, I conclude that DeFoe was more of an influence.  He also cites Pythagoras, but only his "Golden Verses", not everything that man wrote.


 * 3. Mather was a leader in the public health field--he is responsible for saving many lives by introducing small pox vaccination in the North American colonies when it was not yet the standard of care in Europe.


 * What about Cotton Mather's ideas about women? Why was that not touched at all?


 * Might want to mention that he was a slave holder.


 * Mike091020 (talk) 14:19, 20 May 2012 (UTC) Who wasn't in that era?


 * many were not, and "intellectual" hanging witches.- travesty of words   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.56.224.34 (talk) 12:59, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Biased Language and Signifier Words
A word I used -- "expunged"-- was replaced by an editor who called it "slanted". The editor seems to have no talk page so I would like to discuss here.

REPUTATION-- the editor who culled "expunged" used this word in the new edit, and it seems to me to be a common signifier word found in 20th c Mather revision. Indeed, some 20th c. scholars seem to be obsessed with CM's REPUTATION. A private individual minding their own business certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt with regard to REPUTATION, but in discussing the period of a province where hundreds were imprisoned and 20 executed and nearly everyone in fear of being accused, a scholar's concern for the REPUTATION of any of the most powerful leaders presiding during this episode does demonstrates a bias.

DEFENSE-- Another signifier word used heavily in 20th c.-- i.e. CM's Wonders is a "DEFENSE" of the trials. Stacy Schiff calls it "propaganda" and that word seems more accurate when looking at CM's frank personal correspondence in 1692 -- Aug 4, Sept 2, Oct 20-- as well as close reading the book itself with a critical eye. But the important point is that the words DEFENSE and PROPAGANDA both express a particular viewpoint.

A DIVINE -- this word sounds, well, divine. It demonstrates bias. (Often found near to the biased and difficult to define "EMINENT".) "Clergy" or "Clergyman" seems less biased. A "theocrat" would seem an accurate term when we notice how influential the clergy were at this time but it does have a perjorative ring to it.

STORM -- 1692 was strange and some aspects will never be explained but it was not a hurricane or a weather event. It was human run and operated, begun and ended. (And note there were no lynchings. The proceedings were orderly, by law, in court.) There is a lineage of thought and influence that can be traced. Motives can be explored, including the evangelical and the counter-enlightenment. The arguments that served to end or prevent such a thing re-occurring can be discussed. Also note, CM first used this term STORM when trying to expunge his own record a few years later in Life of Phips. Naively recycling CM's own self-interested arguments does not make for good scholarship.

OUTBREAK -- similar to STORM, and popular in 20th c. this word removes culpability by making the episode sound like a virus, like ebola. In contrast notice the more reasoned and rational word "DELUSION" preferred by scholars as early as the 18th c. and thru the 19th c. (SG. Drake's "Witchcraft Delusion" vols I-III is a reprint of Wonders and Robert Calef's book.)

WITCH-- A dehumanizing word when applied to an individual. Mid-20th c. Harvard historian SE Morison also used the term "wench". The more accurate term "accused" was preferred by Robert Calef, Samuel Willard, and many scholars thru 18th and 19th c. The fact that most of the individuals executed could have saved themselves via false confession would seems to demonstrate that they were likely the more principled and serious in their moral conviction. Having paid the ultimate price, but with most convictions vacated and fully pardoned within 20 years, they would now seem to deserve the benefit of the doubt and some gentler language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lewismr (talk • contribs) 13:42, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

September 2017
(Someone's contribution on Sept 11, 2017 was treated as graffiti and removed, but are we really so certain Cotton Mather was not a "dinosaur wrestler"? Is it anti-Puritan to suggest he did not? Let us all agree that "in the plastick spirit" that reverend and eminent divine may have also taken on T. Rex.:-) Lewismr (talk) 20:20, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Sacvan Bercovitch
The Bercovitch quotation in the "Life and work" section seems opinionated, unnecessary, and unhelpful. It is, however, large and central to the section, thus disproportionately influential to anyone who comes to WP to understand this important historical figure. That person will walk away with an understanding all right--Mr. Bercovitch's. It seems finding something good to say about the personage would be a much better and more informative method in writing a biography.


 * "Few puritans more loudly decried the bosom serpent of egotism than did Cotton Mather; none more clearly exemplified it. Explicitly or implicitly, he projects himself everywhere in his writings. In the most direct compensatory sense, he does so by using literature as a means of personal redress. He tells us that he composed his discussions of the family to bless his own, his essays on the riches of Christ to repay his benefactors, his tracts on morality to convert his enemies, his funeral discourses to console himself for the loss of a child, wife, or friend."

Dynasteria (talk) 19:46, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * One of Wikipedia's core policies is Neutral point of view, which means that we should not be trying to find something good to say about the subject of an article any more than we should be trying to find something bad to say about that subject. We should include in an article material that is significant and well attested in reliable sources, and present it in a neutral way. Different viewpoints on a subject that are presented in reliable sources should be included in an article, giving due weight proportional to how much support for the different viewpoints is found in reliable sources. - Donald Albury 21:08, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The quote basically calls Mather an egotist and implies he was a hypocrite. Is that neutral? I wasn't literally advocating presenting merely a rosy picture, which I hope you were well aware of. But it would behoove any biography to explain why the person was important enough to merit attention. As well, it is incumbent upon a biography to explain the accomplishments. If you're writing about George Washington, is the fact that he owned slaves all you focus on? Dynasteria (talk) 21:46, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't particularly like long quotes from works about a subject. One thing that you can do is summarize the contents of the quote, reducing the amount of space it takes up in the article. You can also look for reliable sources that illustrate other facets of Mather's life and work. In the end,it will be a judgment call, hopefully reached in collaboration with other editors, on how much weight to give to each source. So, be bold, find reliable sources, and edit the article. - Donald Albury 22:50, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Serious problems with this article
Having read through the current text of this article, I think that it's clear that something is seriously wrong. The vast majority of the article is concerned with the Salem Witch Trials, and it descends there into great detail about conflicting views by subsequent historians on Mather's role in those trials. This completely overwhelms the narrative, and may not even be strictly neutral in the way that it characterizes the more positive modern evaluations as belonging to a revisionist "Kittredge lineage". Much of this discussion is not appropriate for an encyclopedia entry, difficult for a lay reader to follow, and verges at certain points on original research.

Moreover, the body of the article says absolutely nothing about Mather's political career, such as his leadership in the 1689 Boston revolt, his unsuccessful attempt to follow his father as president of Harvard, his conflicts with governor Joseph Dudley, or his support for the new Yale College. Major modern secondary sources, such as Kenneth Silverman's 1985 biography (which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the Bancroft Prize in American history!) aren't used at all. Besides the Salem Witch Trials (with which, according to mainstream modern scholars like Silverman, Mather was only tangentially involved), the only other aspect of Mather's career that this article really covers is his work on smallpox inoculation.

I think it's clear that the article needs a thorough re-write. A discussion of Mather's political career has to be included, and the treatment of the Salem Witch Trials needs to be shortened and substantially re-written. - Eb.hoop2 (talk) 18:08, 21 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Be bold, editor. You do you. As long as you’re working toward conveying the whole truth (in good faith we'll assume) we’re with you.


 * No one who has closely read the slippery, often pseudo-anonymous, and argumentative Cotton Mather, or the views of his contemporaries, would be surprised to hear that it is difficult to structure an encyclopedia entry on him. I would suggest trying to follow a chronological timeline forward. We have the luxury of the long-tail so there’s no reason to leave anything out if it meets Verifiability. That is the most important principle here. Original research is more a problem with current events and living persons. Unless you have a time machine, you’re unlikely to be able to do original research on Cotton Mather. And no need— there are bucketloads of published info available, almost all of it public domain. In academia, we traditionally encourage scholars to cite recent and copyrighted publications (admittedly, there’s a self-serving aspect to this, as "mentees" are encouraged to cite mentors who in turn feel pressured to continually publish). But that is not the case here, in our free encyclopedia built around creative commons and accessibility. If you are citing a recent work that is behind a paywall and relatively difficult for others to verify, like the excellent 1987 essay by Virginia Bernhard, "Cotton Mather's "Most Unhappy Wife”, or Wolfgang Spitter’s "The Fact and Fiction of Cotton Mather’s Correspondence with German Pietist August Hermann Francke," it is a recommended best practice to try to find the older PD info cited by these and link to it as well.


 * Neutrality is probably best expressed by communicating two different viewpoints. Your views expressed above seem to closely align with what began as a contrarian lineage when WF Poole wrote a long and critical review of CW Upham’s work on Salem. This was soon after the Civil War. I don’t mean to suggest there is shame in choosing to align with this lineage, and many have been proud of it and directly mentioned Poole and GL Kittredge, especially in the 1980s (you mention K Silverman and I would add Chadwick Hansen and Michael Hall). But if you are unaware of the roots and don’t realize there is a different and parallel view that has had many adherents over the centuries (ex: Harvard Pres Quincy, JL Sibley, GH Moore), you may accidentally think you alone have a patented correct view while everyone else is a fool for not paying attention to poor Cotton Mather’s “reputation.”


 * GL Burr opposed the views of GL Kittredge and we can easily download pdfs containing the back and forth between them. Burr was a medievalist with a foundation in the European witch-phobia which was far more devastating that what happened at Salem. Burr was inspired to respond to what he considered Kittredge's outlandish mistakes to bring out the seminal and continuously in print “Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases”. Burr added some helpful notes but mostly assumed scholars would be able to read and understand the words of the Mathers (often double, disingenuous, and veering toward Orwellian).


 * “Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered.” This according to Burr. (Narratives p 197 n 1). If true, we may have the witch-phobic theology promoted by the Mathers to thank for accidentally helping pave the way to broader religious toleration, the separation of church and state, and even freedom of the (printing) press. Notice how these came about in such a relatively short time after the Colonial Laws had listed idolatry, witchcraft and blasphemy as the top 3 capital offenses. History often pivots on bad examples, bad ideas that finally cause enough pain and suffering that their wrong-headedness is plain for all to see through the convoluted and insincere arguments supporting them. Lewismr (talk) 16:55, 24 January 2022 (UTC)


 * The problem of "original research", in this context, has little to do with online availability of the sources quoted and commented upon. One would be doing original research by passing judgment on primary and secondary sources in the way that a historian would in a book or an article written for publication, even if all of those sources could be freely read online.  That's essentially what "historical research" means, and what professional historians are usually paid for (the career of a historian doesn't normally revolve around discovering previously unknown or unread documents).  And Wikipedia isn't an appropriate medium for such a interpretive effort, both because it's supposed to be a general-interest encyclopedia and because the articles are anonymous and collective.


 * Our job here is simply to summarize the current secondary literature, pointing out substantive disagreements where they exist, but without taking sides if there's no clear consensus in the modern scholarship. If you're an expert on the subject and disagree with readings that are dominant in the current secondary literature, this isn't the place to try to set the record straight.


 * I'll try to do what I can to improve this article, but I also think there's plenty that others could do, without necessarily requiring any deep expertise on the subject. As I said, it's clearly not appropriate to say so much about the Salem Witch Trials and not a single word (except for what I've now added to the lead) about the rebellion of 1689, or about Mather's involvement with Harvard and Yale.  Also, however much you or another editor might disagree with it, there's no shortage of professional scholars currently specializing in the subject who regard it as "deplorable that Mather's reputation is still largely overshadowed by the specter of Salem witchcraft" (to quote from Prof. Reiner Smolinski's introductory essay to Wonders of the Invisible World), and this should also be reflected in the article. - Eb.hoop2 (talk) 19:41, 24 January 2022 (UTC)


 * You seem to have a limited view of wikipedia, like it is an online version of a portable Columbia Encyclopedia. I don't agree and think this encyclopedia is wild but already much better and more expansive and informative than those printed 25 years ago when the technology did not exist to more quickly convey information.


 * I totally agree with you that the Boston Revolt of 1689 should be here. The catch is that the more you focus on the power and influence of the Mathers before 1692, the more support you add to the view that they were most culpable for Salem. I don't agree with your notion that editors are supposed to limit scholarship to "current secondary literature." But if that is your view, you'll certainly want to track down the Wolfgang Splitter from 2010, and Stacy Schiff's 2015 view of CM's Wonder's as "propaganda." Against Schiff and Splitter, you might find happy agreement with J Kamensky's book review. Sound familiar? Yes, same basic lines as Upham vs Poole, Burr vs Kittredge. As you say, it's not our job to pick sides but it is our job to acknowledge there are two sides and have been for a long time.


 * I think of this encyclopedia as humanistic, broadly interested in all human beings, with the hope of moving past the rah-rah team spirit that has sometimes afflicted historical writing. A public relations department for a religious order or a university that is most concerned with "reputation" would be better served creating their own website and packing it full of whatever boosterism. Lewismr (talk) 21:11, 24 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I respectfully submit that your approach to this and other related subjects, as far as I understand it, is not tenable. In a piece published by an identifiable author, a judgment or interpretation can stand on that author's authority.  Here in Wikipedia, the editors are anonymous and usually a reader doesn't even know which editor has written which parts of an article.  So here nothing substantive can stand on the judgment of an editor.  Nor is it reasonable to expect that any significant number of readers (or even of other editors) will have the time, interest, knowledge, and patience to work through the references provided in order to decide whether the interpretation offered is convincing.  Therefore, all that we can do here is to recycle straightforwardly the judgments and interpretations of authors who can uncontroversially be identified as reliable, which basically means modern historians who've published their work in reputable venues and who've been favorably evaluated by other experts.  If those interpretations are flawed, this isn't the venue to try to fix them.  I think it's not difficult to see that this is what the "no original research" policy implies for historical articles such as this one.  And if you wish to establish what are the current scholarly trends in the historical interpretation of Cotton Mather, including his role in the Salem Witch Trials, I might suggest starting with this review of the ongoing "Mather Project". - Eb.hoop2 (talk) 04:02, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

While it is important to keep in mind policies and guidelines such as Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Reliable sources, No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, also be careful to avoid Wikipedia:Edit warring. If you cannot reach a consensus for edits to the article on this talk page, then consult the policy at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution for appropriate steps to involve other editors in a discussion. I do not have any axe to grind here; this article is on my watchlist solely because I added a link to the article I started on William Douglas (physician). I do not anticipate being able to devote editing time to this article in the near future, but I will be watching for adherence to the above policies and guidelines. - Donald Albury 16:06, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Two more marriages... 15 children
I am a little confused as to why there is no mention of Mather's second and third wives - Elizabeth Hubbard and Lydia Lee Mather - and aside from the children with his first wife, no other children are mentioned.

I will likely start the article about Lydia Lee Mather, who was married to him from 1715 until his death in 1734. There seem to be differing opinions about her character and mental health - protective mother and caring wife - or insane woman. ,, , , etc

Is there a particular reason why information about his two other wives and children have been left out of the article.?

Thanks!–CaroleHenson (talk) 06:52, 16 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I added a "Personal life" section here.–CaroleHenson (talk) 18:15, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Wrong personal life info
Literally everything about his personal life is wrong. Read his diaries and see that he was married to Abigail with eight children and she died from smallpox in 1703. His next wife Elizabeth and three of their children died from measles in 1713. 2601:1C2:0:8E40:8C68:E3D8:8F41:E89 (talk) 23:44, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

The portrait is not John Cotton (1585-1652)
The image commonly reputed to be Rev. John Cotton (1585-1652) of Boston is incorrect. The periwig and clothing alone prove a much later sitter, likely instead to be his great-grandson Rev. John Cotton (1693–1757) of Newton, MA. Pikiwedia3000 (talk) 16:30, 6 April 2024 (UTC)