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Cotton's study is a room that Reverend Cotton Mather rented after coming to Salem to deal with the witch hunt on behalf of his father.

Description

Cotton rented one of the upstairs room of the Salem Inn, the local tavern. The room is quite big, especially when compared to those rented in Knocker's Hole, with a single bed with a side against the wall just on the right side entering the door.

Several shelves are burdened by the weight of plenty of books, handbooks, journals and sacred text concerning Witchcraft, the Devil and the methods of hunting, interrogating and eliminating witches. Along with the books, Cotton kept an array of instruments of scientific value and usefulness such as astrolabes, globes, maps and geographical maps. The room was also cluttered by drawers and trunks full of strange objects studied by the Reverend, as tools to detect paranormal activity but also artifacts taken from the accused and kept to be studied and recorded in the diaries of the young witch hunter.

Throughout the Salem Series

To Be Added

Gallery

Trivia

  • Many of the books that take the dust on the shelves of the library of Cotton Mather are real volumes published during the period in which events are narrated, such as:
    • "Saducismus triumphatus: or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions. In two parts. The first treating of their possibility. The second of their real existence" by Joseph Glanvill, published posthumously in England in 1681. This book strongly influenced Cotton Mather in his Discourse on Witchcraft (1689) and the Salem witch trials held 1692-3 in Salem, Massachusetts. Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World (1693) is largely modeled after this book and its reports, particularly the material relating to the Mora witch trial of 1669.
      • This book has been shown several times opened on the desk, in particular in The Stone Child.
    • Malleus Maleficarum (commonly rendered into English as "Hammer of the Witches"; Der Hexenhammer in German) is a treatise on the prosecution of witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman. This book was a real handbook for the witch hunters, a kind of best-selling ahead of its time.
    • Wonders of the Invisible World was a book published in 1693 by Cotton Mather, defending Mather's role in the witch-hunt conducted in Salem, Massachusetts, and espousing the belief that witchcraft was an evil magical power.
      • This book is probably the one mentioned by Mary Sibley in The Stone Child, or at least its draft since the book was published after the trials.
    • The Holy Bible, most likely King James Version (KJV), commonly known as the Authorized Version (AV) or King James Bible (KJB), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England.
    • Book of Common Prayer, a short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches.

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