However, most intellectuals and writers from Dalmatia who used the Štokavian dialect and practiced the Catholic faith saw themselves as part of a Croatian nation as far back as the mid-16th to 17th centuries, some 300 years before Serbo-Croatian ideology appeared. Their loyalty was first and foremost to Catholic Christendom, but when they professed an ethnic identity, they referred to themselves as "Slovin" and "Illyrian" (a sort of forerunner of Catholic baroque pan-Slavism) and Croat – these 30-odd writers over the span of c. 350 years always saw themselves as Croats first and never as part of a Serbian nation. It should also be noted that, in the pre-national era, Catholic religious orientation did not necessarily equate with Croat ethnic identity in Dalmatia. A Croatian follower of Vuk Karadžić, Ivan Broz, noted that for a Dalmatian to identify oneself as a Serb was seen as foreign as identifying oneself as Macedonian or Greek. Vatroslav Jagić pointed out in 1864:

To which group did the people of the Catholic faith refer to themselves primarily?