Istro-Romanian

The Istro-Romanians are the smallest Eastern Romance people, in the hills and coastal towns of Istria. Their language is close to Romanian rather than the extinct Dalmatian of the Roman coast, and most scholars think their ancestors were Vlach shepherds who moved west from Transylvania or the Timok valley in the high Middle Ages, local tradition telling of seven caravans into Istria.

Tenth-century Byzantine writers noted Romance-speaking islanders calling themselves Romans, and a Buzet document of 1329 names a Vlach with the exonym Ćići. Fourteenth-century Vlach herders around Split, Zadar and Krk ran caravans selling cheese and Adriatic salt.

Uniquely among Eastern Romance peoples they are Catholics, under the Patriarchate of Aquileia and later Venice. Venetian rule, plague and Slavic refugees in the fifteenth century began their assimilation into the Croatian population, continuing under Austrian administration as their Učka villages shrank.