Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 took place in the Puritan community of Salem, Massachusetts. Cotton Mather, a clergyman in Salem, emerged throughout the course of the trials as a pillar of support and, ultimately, as a witch-hunter. However, his motives at the beginning of the trials were driven by his Puritanical reasoning which holds a strong belief in Biblical Law. Cotton Mather used his Puritanical faith to find reasoning in God that allowed the Salem Witch Trials to occur.
Puritanism spawned from a reform group of the Church of England in the mid-sixteenth century. Puritans felt the need to make the Church of England pure from the corrupt influences of the Roman Empire.1 In their New England colony, including Salem, they held the Bible to be the foundation of their legal system, while also including some of the common laws of England. The Bible was the basis of the legal system because God, in Scripture, told people how to live. Since man was born with original sin and could, therefore, inadvertently make laws that went against Scripture, the Puritans looked to God, through his words, to decide the righteous course of action.2 They followed this not only in their legal system, but also in their everyday lives. Everyone in the community of Salem attended church, and the church was the pillar of the community in every aspect of life. They did not hold the Bible open to interpretation, and they tried to live humble lives in servitude to the Lord. The Puritan ideals in Salem left the town wide open to the crisis that ensued in sixteen ninety-two. Anything that strayed from the ordinary, from the direct following of God's Word, could be seen as coming from the Devil, since it was as ...
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Inc. 1960), 96.
4 Levin, What Happened in Salem?, 97.
5 Levin, What Happened in Salem?, 98.
6 Brian P. Levack, Witchcraft in Colonial America, vol. 8 of Articles on Witchcraft,
Magic and Demonology (New York : Garland Publishing, Inc. 1992), 281.
7 Levin, What Happened in Salem?, 101.
8 Levin, What Happened in Salem?, 102.
9 Levin, What Happened in Salem?, 103.
10 Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story : Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (New York :
Cambridge University Press 1993), 135.
11 Levack, Witchcraft in Colonial America, 286.
12 Rosenthal, Salem Story, 147.
13 Rosenthal, Salem Story, 145.
14 Rosenthal, Salem Story, 202.
15 Christina Larner, Witchcraft and Religion : The Politics of Popular Belief (Basil
Blackwell Inc. 1987), 80.
16 McClendon, "Puritan Jurisprudence."
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft is a concise, 231 page informational text by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum. Published in 1974, it explores the economic and social conditions present in the Salem village during the 1600s that led to the hysteria surrounding witchcraft. Multiple graphs and illustrations are present, as well as an average sized font, an abundance of footnotes typically on the left page, and a prominent voice from the authors. The book was written to serve as a more comprehensive informational piece on the Salem witch trials due to the authors finding other pieces written about the same topic to be inaccurate. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum wanted to create something that utilized
The thoroughness is one of its key strengths, allowing for people of varying knowledge about Salem to gain an understanding of the events and background of the witch trials. The author includes multiple sources to show the exceptionally varying ideals and their effects on Salem. “the peace that came under Joseph Green's conciliatory leaders... the important role religious strife played in the events of 1692”(Latner, 2006, 118). Joseph Green completely paralleled his predecessors, he was responsible for restoring order to Salem. This is significant because it shows the impact that ministers had, they had the power to change the town completely, Green was one of the first to not cause strife. Compared to Christine Leigh Heyrman’s “Witchcraft in Salem Village: Intersections of Religion and Society” Latner’s article correlates with the central idea that religious leaders and religion itself started the witch
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft explores and breaks down the events that took place in the small village of Salem in 1692. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, authors of Salem Possessed, use primary sources, both published and unpublished, to tell the crazy and eventful history of Salem. They go into great detail in why some folks were accused of being Witches, the arrests and the so popular Salem Witch Trials. The main reason for this book was to try and find out what caused the terrible outbreak of events that happened in Salem and they do so by looking into the History and Social life in the famed Salem Village. The history of Witchcraft in Salem is a well-known story from High School on and this book goes in depth about why things happened the way they did and how the social aspect played a big role is the story.
Cotton Mather, in his The Wonders of the Invisible World, preserved for posterity a very dark period in Puritanical American society through his account of the Salem witch trials in 1692. His description is immediately recognizable as being of the same viewpoint as those who were swept up in the hysteria of the moment. Mather viewed Salem as a battleground between the devil and the Puritans. "The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those which were once the devil's territories. . . . The devil thus irritated, immediately tried all sorts of methods to overturn this poor plantation" (Mather 421). Here Mather is alluding to the Native Americans as being a people associated with the devil rather than with their God, a common point of view held towards all savage people. Mather saw the witches of Salem as being "his [the devil's] incarnate legions" sent to Salem "to persecute us. . ." (Mather 421). The Salem witch trials have become a part of American mythology which has been passed down to each succeeding generation for over 300 years after the village of Salem sent its last witch to the gallows. However, it is the witch trials relevance to modern society more than any other factor that has contributed to its legendary place in American history and mythology. The witch trials that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, are the precursor to the modern trials where adults are accused of crimes including ritualistic sexual molestation of children. These types of ritualized abuse are commonly linked to Satanic cults. Modern beliefs in Satanists mirror similar beliefs held of colonial witches.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”, Exodus 22:18. In 1692 , in Salem Massachusetts , the Puritans believed everything in the bible, they also believed in witches and that witches should not be able to live.There were at least 3 causes for the Salem witch trial hysteria. There are: age, gender, and marital status , lying girls, and a divided town.
The Salem Witch trials were when hundreds of citizens of Salem, Massachusetts were put on trial for devil-worship or witchcraft and more than 20 were executed in 1692. This is an example of mass religion paranoia. The whole ordeal began in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris. People soon began to notice strange behavior from Parris’s slave, Tituba, and his daughters. Many claimed to have seen Parris’s daughters doing back magic dances in the woods, and fall to the floor screaming hysterically. Not so long after, this strange behavior began to spread across Salem.
McBain, J. ‘The Salem Witch Trials: A Primary Source History of the Witchcraft Trials in Salem, Massachusetts’, (Rosen Publishing Group, New York, 2002)
Robinson, Enders A. & Co. The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692, New York:. Hippocrene Books, 1991. http://www Shrecker, Ellen. A.
Witchcraft has been present in many other religions, not only the Puritan religion. Witchcraft was also found in Catholic and Protestant parts of Europe. The Salem Witch Trials were smaller in comparison to those in Scotland, France, or Germany (Hall 3). Though the trials in Salem were smaller, people recognize the Salem Witch Trials as one of the worst times in American history (“Witch Madness” 4). The Puritans believed that the Devil was alive in their community (“Witch Madness” 2). The accusations started in February 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts when young Puritan girls were found using magic. The Salem Witch Trials began when Betty Paris, Abigail Williams, and some of their friends began to act strange with odd fits (Hall 1). Because many mental and emotional disorders were not understood, the people of Salem believed it was the work of witchcraft. When sickness or even misfortune came, the most
The church and Christian beliefs had a very large impact on the Puritan religion and lifestyle. According to discovery education, “Church was the cornerstone of the mainly Puritan society of the 17th century.”( Douglas 4). Puritan laws were intensively rigid and people in society were expected to follow a moral strict code. And because of Puritans and their strict moral codes, any act that was considered to go against this code was considered a sin and deserved to be punished. In Puritan theology, God h...
The actual history of the Salem Witch trials took place in Massachusetts, Puritan New England. It was a series of trials of people being accused of witchcraft/ crimes against religion, many of those accused were women. Mass hysteria
The Puritans were Englishmen who chose to separate from the Church of England. Puritans believed that the Anglican Church or Church of England resembled the Roman Catholic Church too closely and was in dire need of reform. Furthermore, they were not free to follow their own religious beliefs without punishment. In the sixteenth century the Puritans settled in the New England area with the idea of regaining their principles of the Christi...
Blumberg, J. (2007, October 24). A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials. Smithsonian Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/?page=2&no-ist
The first arrival of the Puritans was in the 1600s. They came within a large number of English immigrants arriving in New England. Puritans traveled this far way across the Atlantic Ocean to practice Christianity in pure ways. The land in New England was hard and rocky, but they were committed to living here and had help from God, as spoken in the Bible. The Bible stated that the Puritans believed, but another subject that was spoken from the Bible was the Devil. They said he could enter a person’s body and turn that person into a witch. If your under his power, then you would make all kinds of trouble, like cause a cow to run away. Soon later in the late 1600’s witchcraft was a popular, serious, crime and many
This source helped me understand how it all started and gave a lot of information on the victims. I also liked this one a lot because of the information it gave on how the trials ended.