Abstract
This chapter examines Cotton Mather’s writing about birds. Drawing primarily on his physico-theological writing, his transatlantic correspondence, and his sermons, it argues that Mather’s bird writing reveals a relatively easy and harmonious merging of scientific and religious approaches. His thinking, reading and writing about both scriptural and actual birds was interwoven and mutually reinforcing. This ‘refusal to restrict himself to one mode of knowing’ highlights an often-neglected aspect of Mather’s work and of the intersection of science and theology in the early eighteenth century. Critical accounts which take Mather’s scientific efforts seriously often position them in tension and competition with the biblical hermeneutic tradition in which he was raised. In Mather’s bird writing, however, we see a minister not anxiously but delightedly drawing connections between early ornithology, the birds in the Bible, and North American avian specimens. His evident pleasure should remind us not to distinguish too confidently and completely between ways of knowing birds in the eighteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
Cotton Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1708, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th Series, vol. 7 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1911), 450.
- 2.
Elsa Guerdrum Allen, ‘The History of American Ornithology before Audubon,’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 41, no. 3 (1951): 458n6.
- 3.
Kevin R. McNamara, ‘The Feathered Scribe: The Discourses of American Ornithology before 1800,’ The William and Mary Quarterly 47, no. 2 (1990): 212.
- 4.
Ibid., 213.
- 5.
Ibid., 217.
- 6.
Carla Mulford, ‘“Pox and Hell Fire”: Boston’s Smallpox Controversy, the New Science, and Early Modern Liberalism’, in Periodical Literature in Eighteenth-Century America, ed. Mark Kamrath and Sharon M. Harris (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 15.
- 7.
John Ray and Francis Willughby, The Ornithology of Francis Willughby (London, 1678), preface; McNamara, ‘The Feathered Scribe,’ 214.
- 8.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things; an Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 43.
- 9.
According to Winton Solberg, Mather relied on the 5th edition of Ray’s text, published in London in 1709. Winton U. Solberg, ‘Introduction,’ in The Christian Philosopher, by Cotton Mather (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), liv.
- 10.
John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, 5th ed. (London, 1709), preface.
- 11.
Ibid., 29–30,137.
- 12.
Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 167.
- 13.
Mather’s pigeon observations were brought to the attention of the modern ornithological community through a series of articles in the Auk: Arlie Schorger, ‘Unpublished Manuscripts by Cotton Mather on the Passenger Pigeon,’ Auk 55, no. 3 (1938): 471–77; Frederic T. Lewis, ‘The Passenger Pigeon As Observed by the Rev. Cotton Mather,’ Auk 61, no. 4 (1944): 587–92; Frederic T. Lewis, ‘Cotton Mather’s Manuscript References to the Passenger Pigeon,’ Auk 62, no. 2 (1945): 306–7.
- 14.
Cotton Mather, The Christian Philosopher, ed. Winton U. Solberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 206–7.
- 15.
William Derham, Physico-Theology (London, 1713), 374.
- 16.
Mather, The Christian Philosopher, 194.
- 17.
Jeffrey Jeske, ‘Cotton Mather: Physico-Theologian,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 4 (1986): 591.
- 18.
Reiner Smolinski, ‘How to Go to Heaven, or How Heaven Goes? Natural Science and Interpretation in Cotton Mather’s ‘Biblia Americana’ (1693–1728),’ The New England Quarterly 81, no. 2 (2008): 307.
- 19.
Winton U. Solberg, ‘Cotton Mather, the “Biblia Americana” and the Enlightenment,’ in Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana—America’s First Bible Commentary: Essays in Reappraisal, Eds. Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 183–202.
- 20.
Cotton Mather, The Soul upon the Wing: An Essay on The State of the Dead (Boston, 1722), 12.
- 21.
Cotton Mather, Columbanus, or the Doves Flying to the Windows of Their Saviour (Boston, 1722), 1.
- 22.
Ibid., 4.
- 23.
Ibid., 5–6.
- 24.
Ibid., 22.
- 25.
Cotton Mather, Work upon the Ark: Meditations Upon the Ark as a Type of the Church (Boston, 1689), 38.
- 26.
Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 1–10, trans. John W. Rettig (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 131.
- 27.
Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 136.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Cotton Mather, Selected Letters of Cotton Mather, ed. Kenneth Silverman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 300.
- 30.
George Lyman Kittredge, ‘Cotton Mather’s Scientific Communications to the Royal Society,’ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 26 (1916): 45.
- 31.
Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 247.
- 32.
‘Letter from John Winthrop (New London) to Cotton Mather Describing His Gift of Sogelander Doves,’ December 29, 1719, Benjamin Colman Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Mather, Selected Letters of Cotton Mather, 301.
- 35.
Cotton Mather, Biblia Americana: America’s First Bible Commentary: A Synoptic Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, ed. Reiner Smolinski, vol. 1: Genesis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 644.
- 36.
Ibid., 654.
Bibliography
Allen, Elsa Guerdrum. ‘The History of American Ornithology before Audubon.’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 41, no. 3 (1951): 385–591.
Augustine. Tractates on the Gospel of John, 1–10. Translated by John W. Rettig. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000.
Derham, William. Physico-Theology. London, 1713.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things; an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Harrison, Peter. The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Jeske, Jeffrey. ‘Cotton Mather: Physico-Theologian.’ Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 4 (1986): 583–94.
Kittredge, George Lyman. ‘Cotton Mather’s Scientific Communications to the Royal Society.’ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 26, no. 1. (1916): 18–57.
Lewis, Frederic T. ‘Cotton Mather’s Manuscript References to the Passenger Pigeon.’ Auk 62, no. 2 (1945): 306–7.
Lewis, Frederic T. ‘The Passenger Pigeon As Observed by the Rev. Cotton Mather.’ Auk 61, no. 4 (1944): 587–92.
Mather, Cotton. Biblia Americana: America’s First Bible Commentary: A Synoptic Commentary on the Old and New Testaments. Vol. 1, Genesis. Edited by Reiner Smolinski. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.
Mather, Cotton. The Christian Philosopher. Edited by Winton U. Solberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
Mather, Cotton. Columbanus, or the Doves Flying to the Windows of Their Saviour. Boston, 1722.
Mather, Cotton. Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1708. Edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1911.
Mather, Cotton. Selected Letters of Cotton Mather. Edited by Kenneth Silverman. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.
Mather, Cotton. The Soul upon the Wing: An Essay on The State of the Dead. Boston, 1722.
Mather, Cotton. Work upon the Ark: Meditations Upon the Ark as a Type of the Church. Boston, 1689.
McNamara, Kevin R. ‘The Feathered Scribe: The Discourses of American Ornithology before 1800.’ The William and Mary Quarterly 47, no. 2 (1990): 210–34.
Mulford, Carla. ‘“Pox and Hell-Fire”: Boston’s Smallpox Controversy, the New Science, and Early Modern Liberalism.’ In Periodical Literature in Eighteenth–Century America. Edited by Mark Kamrath and Sharon M. Harris, 7–27. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005.
Parrish, Susan Scott. American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Ray, John. The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. 5th ed. London, 1709.
Ray, John, and Francis Willughby. The Ornithology of Francis Willughby. London, 1678.
Schorger, Arlie. ‘Unpublished Manuscripts by Cotton Mather on the Passenger Pigeon.’ Auk 55, no. 3 (1938): 471–77.
Silverman, Kenneth. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.
Smolinski, Reiner. ‘How to Go to Heaven, or How Heaven Goes? Natural Science and Interpretation in Cotton Mather’s “Biblia Americana”’ (1693–1728).’ The New England Quarterly 81, no. 2 (2008): 278–329.
Solberg, Winton U. ‘Cotton Mather, the “Biblia Americana” and the Enlightenment.’ In Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana—America’s First Bible Commentary: Essays in Reappraisal. Edited by Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann, 183–202. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.
Winthrop, John. ‘Letter from John Winthrop (New London) to Cotton Mather Describing His Gift of Sogelander Doves’, December 29, 1719. Benjamin Colman Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
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Junkerman, N. (2020). ‘The Incomparable Curiosity of Every Feather!’: Cotton Mather’s Birds. In: Carey, B., Greenfield, S., Milne, A. (eds) Birds in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32792-7_13
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