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有利可图的复兴？再思风俗改革运动的菁英论与大众化“敬虔市场”
A Profitable Revival? The Reformation of Manners and the Popularization of the Market of Piety
摘要
英格兰在1690年代掀起的风俗改革浪潮，常被看作是典型的由菁英发起、企图“净化”大众文化的宗教改革运动。然而，本文以风俗改革社团成员及捕盗者（thief-taker）查理斯．希钦（Charles Hitchin, 1675－1727）的犯罪图利行为为例，欲打破学界对“改革者”与“被改革的对象”的刻板印象与传统论述。风俗改革运动高度仰赖非菁英族群的积极参与，且在运动的具体经验上，“改革者”与“被改革的对象”两种身份不仅能在一人身上并存，且两造之间并非恒定的主宾，而是错综复杂、甚至利益共生的关系。本文聚焦于运动中的宣传语言和概念，探讨其如何有效地透过证道、出版物等深入一般大众的生活。利用这些思想、语言来追求不当暴利（profiteering），不仅是超越阶级的现象，更深入了伦敦的地下犯罪网络。从政教菁英到底层人民，风俗改革的参与者皆能透过宗教性的语言得利，与当时快速兴起的商业宣传与投资逐利现象相映成趣。正因着此运动突破国教体制、超宗派的特性，其中系统性、组织性的逐利行为俨然促成大众化的“敬虔市场”。这是一条学界仍未仔细探索的路径：在以敬虔为名的商业企划百花齐放之时，社会最底层的人们究竟在多大程度上参与了这名作家丹尼尔．笛福（Dnaiel Defoe）口中的“企划年代”（the projecting age）？本文借希钦一例，不仅重思风俗改革中非菁英族群的角色及其重要性，更强调其对大众化、跨越阶级藩篱的“企划年代”之贡献。
並列摘要
England witnessed a new wave of the reformation of manners in the 1690s, a movement often characterized as a typical elite attempt to 'purify' popular culture. However, this article takes as an example the corrupt policing and profiteering of Charles Hitchin (c. 1675-1727), a thief-taker and an agent of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, in order to complicate the traditional binary between the 'reformer' and 'those being reformed'. The Reformation of Manners relied heavily on the active participation of non-elite groups. On the ground, the identities of the 'reformer' and 'the reformed' could also coexist in the same individual. The dynamic between the two roles was never static, but was highly complex and even symbiotic. This article focuses on the concepts and language of propaganda that promoted the Reformation of Manners, and explores how these ideas penetrated the daily lives of the wider public through sermons and promotional literature. The exploitation of these ideas and language for profiteering transcended social boundaries and infiltrated even London's underground criminal networks. From the political and ecclesiastical elites to the lower tiers of the society, participants in the Reformation of Manners used religious rhetoric for personal gain, mirroring broader trends in commercial propaganda and proto-capitalist pursuits during the period. Hence the democratized 'market of piety' that empowered systematic, organized profiteering through the cross-denominational, supra-institutional movement of the Reformation of Manners. This is a path that scholars have yet to thoroughly explore: as various projects sprang up in the name of piety, how involved were the lowest tiers of society in what the English novelist Daniel Defoe famously termed the 'projecting age'? This case study not only reassesses the critical role played by non-elite participants in the Reformation of Manners, but also highlights their contribution to the democratization of the 'projecting age'.