The Istrian Coat of Arms
What’s a goat doing there on croatian flag?
Can you see it? Coat of arms of Croatia is a red-white checkerboard with a crown of five arms, representing five historical regions.
The goat on the flag represents the region of Istria. Istria is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic
Sea. It is shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy. To simplify, we can say that Istria is a region between the Italian town of Trieste and the Croatian town of Rijeka. Most of the peninsula is in Croatia, more precisely in our Istrian County.
The region got its name from Histri, an ancient tribe that lived there before the Romans came. During many centuries it was under many different rulers: Romans, Venetians, the Habsburgs, Italians, until it finally became part of Croatia only in 1943, first as part of Yugoslavia and then in the 1990s as part of independent Croatia. All these historic facts contribute to the mix of today’s Istria, visible in languages that are spoken in the region (Croatian, Italian, Slovene…), but also in many different historical monuments from various periods.
The goat was the symbol of the region already in the Roman period. However, since the region was always split between so many powers (Venice, the Habsburgs, later Italy), there was never an “official” flag of the region. The coat of arms of Istria originate with the coat of arms of the Austrian duchy of Istria which underwent many transformations (and possible gender changes, too).
The inspiration for this rendition of the goat emblem appears to be the Alpine goat (Capra inex), not the domestic coat (Capra aeragrus hircus) which appeared later. There have been many different interpretations of the Istrian goat emblem. The official coat of arms of Istria under Croatia, its current ruling nation, was adopted in 2002 and bears a haughty resemblance to the Austro-Hungarian rendition while also retaining the goat's characteristic red horns and hoofs. Other renditions vary between the alpine and domestic goats. There is one coat of arms from the 19th century, of the Istrian Dutchy within the Habsburg Empire, where we can see – of course, a goat.
Very nice coat of arms, in fact, very “Habsburg-style”.
No one knows exactly why. Of course, there were and there are goats all over Istria, but there are all other farm animals as well. Why choose a goat, then? Some suggest that there was maybe a “cult of a goat” already in the pre-Roman times, that it was like some sort of a sacred animal, like many other “goat-like gods and creatures” from other parts of the world, but
there’s not enough archaeological objects found to support that theory.
It’s maybe interesting that the goat in question is not any wild goat, but a domesticated kind called the “Istrian goat”. That makes the coat of arms of Istria and in fact the flag of the entire country unique in the world to have such animal as a symbol.
Also, goats are very resilient animals, they can easily escape any harm, unlike other domesticated animals. Because of its resilience, it represents perfectly the region of Istria, a region that survived many “harms” during its history, many different kingdoms and empires… The Venetians fell, the Habsburgs fell, but Istria, like a goat, still stands.
Comments