Bulgarian literature and culture in general. Literary activity largely ceased, being concentrated in the monasteries that established themselves as centres of Bulgarian culture in the foreign empire. The religious theme continued to be dominant in the few works that were produced. The main literary form of the 17th and 18th century were instructive sermons, at first translated from Greek and then compiled by Bulgarians. A literary tradition continued to exist relatively uninterrupted during the early Ottoman rule in northwestern Bulgaria up until the Chiprovtsi Uprising in end of the 17th century among the Bulgarian Catholics who were supported by the Catholic states of Central Europe. Many of these works were written in a mixture of vernacular Bulgarian, Church Slavonic and Serbo-Croatian and was called "Illyric". Among these was the first book printed in modern Bulgarian, the breviary Abagar published in Rome in 1651 by Filip Stanislavov, bishop of Nikopol. The Illyrian movement for South Slavic unity affected the Bulgarian literature of the 18th and 19th century. Hristofor Zhefarovich's Stemmatographia of 1741 is thought of as the earliest example of modern Bulgarian secular poetry for its quatrains, although it was essentially a collection of engravings. Bulgarian National Revival The nearly five centuries of Ottoman government of Bulgaria played a decisive role in the developing of the Bulgarian culture. The country was separated from the European Renaissance movements and higher forms of artistic expression and developed mostly its folklore songs and fairy-tales. A new revival of Bulgarian literature began in the 18th century with the historiographical writings of Paisius of Hilendar, Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya. Another influential work was Life and Sufferings of Sinful Sophronius by Sophronius of Vratsa. In the period 1840–1875 the literature came alive with writings on mainly revolutionary, anti-Turkish themes. It was an earlier stage of the Bulgarian Renaissance and the most prominent poets at this time were: Vasil Drumev, Rayko Zhinzifov and Dobri Chintulov. The noted poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev (1848–1876) worked in the late 19th century and is nowadays regarded as arguably the foremost Bulgarian poet of the period. He managed to use the living language of the folklore songs to give an expression of modern ideas, doubts and questions. His works are small in number, most of them with intensive dialogue form and strong emotional message. Among the writers who engaged in revolutionary activity were also Lyuben Karavelov and Georgi Sava Rakovski. Rakovski's best-known work, Gorski