Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather ( born February 12, 1663 Boston (Massachusetts Bay Colony ), † February 13, 1728 ) was a Puritan clergyman and scholar. He was intellectually and politically most significant figure of the third generation of English settlers in New England.

Life and work

He was the son of Increase Mather, and grandson of John Cotton and Richard Mather, who belonged in turn to the leaders of the second and first Puritanergeneration in Boston, and so it is not surprising that he joined in their footsteps. With only twelve years he began to study at Harvard for the priesthood; his father was the president of the college. He received his Bachelor of fifteen years, with eighteen the master. In 1680 he gave to his father's congregation in the Boston Old North Church his first sermon. After the death of his father in 1685 he took over the pulpit of this church completely. In the politics of the colonies, he mingled a 1688; after the deposition of King James II, he was one of the ringleaders of a successful revolt against Edmund Andros, the royal governor of the New England colonies.

In more than 450 books and pamphlets Mather wrote against the weakening of orthodox Puritanism and the secularization of the American colonies. In the Salem Witch Trials he was not represented in the panel of judges, but influenced in his advice many convictions. His relentless attitude to the processes he defended in 1693 in his book Wonders of the Invisible World ( " wonders of the invisible world "). In this Joseph Glanvills Sadducismus Triumphatus ( 1682) ajar work he strengthened his faith in the workings of witches and other emissaries of Satan in the world.

In all superstition Mather was but in other matters a quite advanced and scientific scholar. He published in 1716 a study on the hybridization of different maize varieties; He also advocated general vaccination against smallpox.

Magnalia Christi Americana

To 1693 Mather began work on his masterpiece Magnalia Christi Americana, which is still regarded as the culmination of New England's history. The seven "books" of the Magnalia published in 1702 in London as a voluminous folio; the numerous biographies of ecclesiastical and secular leaders of the New England colonies, representations of church history, the history of Harvard College and secular concerns such as the Indian wars make the Magnalia become an important source for historical research, the work, however, already left contemporaries appear to be overly pedantic and extravagantly. Especially in England, where Puritanism had exhausted as a political and religious power since the Restoration, Mathers work was perceived as an anachronism; Only the Presbyterian -dominated University of Glasgow honored Mather 1710 with a doctorate. The criticism of the Magnalia was directed to one against the turgid wealth of references and citations to the Bible and classical motifs, but also against Mathers amalgamation of salvation and world history. Even in New England to Mathers contemporaries turned increasingly to worldly things, and Thomas Prince displaced Mather with his sober Chronological History of New England in the Form of Annals ( 1736-55 ) as an exegete of New England's history.

It was not until 1820 got Thomas Robbins, the librarian of the Connecticut Historical Society, a first American edition, which slowly but steadily sold; a second edition appeared in 1853. these American editions focussed the attention of the American Romantics such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson in particular on Mather. Critics such as Sacvan Bercovitch have the one demonstrated the continuity of Puritan traits in American intellectual history in the Mather reception this time and implies that Mather in his salvation-historical exaggeration of New England's history as American history, just the Christ Americana that since the founding of colonies prevailing in election of the New England Puritans had not only encouraged, but had given him a uniquely American character. Mather appears as well earlier as representative member of exceptionalism, which acts by the American intellectual history until today.

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