In the eighth century the Tartar invasion interrupted the course of civil literature. Russia then had no time for the remembrance of anything but her disasters, and the Church became again the only depository of the civilization brought from Byzantium, and of the intellectual riches of the nation; for the Khans, who destroyed everything else, regarded the churches and images with superstitious respect. The little then written expresses the grief of Russia over her catastrophe, but in sermon form, presenting it as a punishment from Heaven, and a portent of the end of the world; it was the universal panic of the Middle Ages arrived in Russia three centuries late. Until the fourteenth century there was no revival of historical narrations in sufficient numbers to show the preponderance of the epic spirit in the Russian people. In the fifteenth century, for the first time, oral literature really penetrated into the domain of the written; but the inevitable and tiresome mediæval stories of Alexander the Great and the Siege of Troy, the Thousand and One Nights, and others, entering by way of Servia and Bulgaria, appear among the literature of the southern Sclavs; and tales of chivalry from Byzantium are also rearranged and copied,--an element of imitation and artificiality which never took deep root in Russia, however. Aside from some few tales, the only germs of vitality are to be found in the apocryphal religious narratives, which were an early expression of the spirit of mysticism and exegesis, natural to Muscovite thought; and in the songs, also religious, chanted by pilgrims on their way to visit the shrines, and by the people also, but probably the work of the monks. These are still sung by beggars on the streets, and the people listen with delight. In the sixteenth century there were Maximus the Greek (the Savonarola of Russia), the priest Silvester, author of "Domostrof," a book which was held to contain the model of ancient Russian society, and lastly the Czar, Ivan the Terrible himself, who wrote many notable epistles, models of irony. The songs of the people still flourished, and they were provided with subject-matter by the awful figure and actions of the emperor, who was beloved by the people, because, like Pedro the Cruel of Castile, he dared to bridle the nobles. The popular poet describes him as giving to a potter the insignia and dignity of a Boyar. This tyrant, the most ferocious that humanity ever endured, busied himself with establishing the art of printing in Russia, with the help of Maximus the Greek, who was a great friend of Aldus the Venetian, the famous printer. According to the Metropolitan Macarius, God himself from his high throne put this thought into the heart of the Czar. On the 1st of May, 1564, the first book printed in Russia, "The Acts of the Apostles," made its appearance.