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Paul Bushkovitch, Urban ideology in medieval Novgorod: an iconographic approach.
This article is an attempt to define the ideology of the merchant class of medieval Novgorod by using the evidence of a fourteenth-century icon. It concentrates on the cult of St. Paraskeva Piatnitsa and other saints depicted on the same icon. The vitae of these saints show that urban ideology developed in two stages. In the twelfth century the merchant class began to have its own peculiar cults and thus express its separateness, but at the same time it found its ideals in the rulers of Novgorod society — boyars and clerics. In the fourteenth century social unrest and the appearance of heresy provoked a response of conservatism.

This volume brings together a collection of papers on the general theoretical and methodological problems in the historiography of semiotics. It is not a history in the conventional sense, even though the main periods and figures in the development of semiotics are given due prominence. Nevertheless, it should offer the reader stimulation and food for thought in the critical approach to even the least questioned facts of semiotic history and the emphasis given to hitherto neglected problems and persons.