Early history In a 1961 piece, local historian Nicolae Nasta summarized the results of archeological finds in and around Suslănești, reporting that, during
Dacian rule in the 3rd century BC, the area served as a storage spot for wine and oil, imported from the
Greek cities on the
Black Sea coast. According to a news item of 2022, Mățău Hill was still hosting a yearly ceremony called "Sumedru's Fire", which may be of a pre-Christian origin. Historian
Ștefan Pascu proposes yet another origin, from the
Bulgarian Мацо (
Matso), a pet form of "Matthew". The digs at Hobaia, a village that once existed just east of Suslănești's territory, were also said to have uncovered ruins dating back to the 10th century AD. Suslănești, which may have been originally known as "Negurești" or "Neguțești", is the only locality in Romania to use this name. Such theories are disputed by some linguists, who note that the suffix
-ănești is almost always indicative of a name derived form
anthroponymy. They suggest that the place was named for
Suslea, from the Slavic name
Suslo(v). Mățău and its environs entered recorded history as a settlement in what was then
Muscel County, part of the Romanian polity known as
Wallachia. One document, dated 1401 or 1402, mentions
Ohaba (literally: "fiscal immunity") on the Argeșel, a name which may have been transformed into
Hobaia ("ravine"), and is perhaps the oldest mention of any part of the present-day commune. An indirect report that a village existed in Mățău during the mid-to-late 15th century is provided by the mention of two locals serving as soldiers for
Wallachian Prince Vlad the Impaler. Suslănești and the surrounding areas were located on the border with
Angevin Hungary, and engaged in trade with its
Transylvanian Saxons. In 1503, the commercial register of
Corona mentioned the village (called
Suslanest or
Suschlanest in
Saxon dialect) as one of 28 Wallachian localities it had direct and permanent exchanges with. This marks the first attestation of the locality; the 1503 record also specifically mentions locals Buda and Tudor bringing
wels, beeswax and hides to the markets in Corona. Some time after, in July 1512, a village known as Negomirești, probably baptized after its founder Negomir, was also attested near Mățău Hill. The future commune was originally divided into yeomen (
moșneni) and serfs (
clăcași)—the former owned the entire future commune, roughly divided into five plots. According to sociological research carried out by Ioan Șucu in the 1970s, the yeomen lineages are traceable to
medieval times, whereas the serf families are historically invisible to 1746, when Prince
Constantine Mavrocordatos abolished serfdom, and lifted them into the class of sharecroppers. The spot was re-investigated by archeologists in July 1959. They discovered 19 tombs, dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, and valuable artifacts. These include a ring belonging to
Spatharios Cazan, indicative of a much higher boyar ranking and decorated with the
double-headed eagle.
Jumărea ascendancy The church building and surrounding Hobaia were ransacked and burned down at some unknown time in history (possibly by the
Ottoman Army). One reading suggest that they were destroyed in 1595, when Prince
Michael the Brave had involved Wallachia in the
Long Turkish War. The surrounding areas were inhabited over the following decades: documents from the 1570s and '80s mention several yeomen (Radu, Drăghici, Oprea of Suslănești) acting as witnesses in land disputes and other legal matters; between the 1590s and the 1620s, the village was one of several estates owned by the boyar Staicu, who rose to the rank of
Postelnic. A votive cross in
Church Slavonic, dating from the 1650s, mentions Suslănești locals Vladislav, Șerban, Negre and Pârvu. Court documents make numerous references to an increasingly powerful Muscel family. Known as "Jumărea" or "Jumărescu", its first known member was Voicu Toacă of Suslănești (active before 1644), whose inheritance was split between children Badea, Neaga, Vișa and Neacșa (the former is known to have used a double-headed eagle on his own seal). From 1697, their estates were also encroached upon by Câmpulung Monastery, after the local
Hieromonk, Cozma, issued a donation. In April 1707, the seven sons of Stanciu Jumărea claimed ownership of Suslănești in its entirety, and met to delineate its southern borders. Voicu's properties continued to be disputed between their various successors, down to 1824. The name as used for a locality is again attested in June 1614, as
Mățăul de Jos ("Lower Mățău"), with the upper half of the village implied, but only truly mentioned in April 1716.
Mățăul de Jos was later abandoned, and its memory is preserved in local toponymy as
Căminuri ("Hearths"). In the 1920s, journalist Gheorghe Lungulescu argued that the settlement had been peopled by soldiers in Michael the Brave's armies, and that some of the surrounding estates went to Michael's generals, the
Buzești brothers. Other records suggest that most of Mățău's inhabitants, including the Vișoiu family, had moved out of the Jumărea domains; it incorporated Negomirești, which disappeared from public record after 1784. Another secondary hamlet,
Dănești, was first attested under that name in 1600, but, after become the identifiable home of a large clan, the Coceans, changed its name to "Cocenești". The newer village, Chilii, was mentioned beginning in 1708. One other group of locals moved out of the area and into Câmpulung, adopting the surname "Suslănescu". Branches of this clan were attested as far east as
Ploiești. By the 18th century, all land in present-day Mioarele was included in one of Muscel's standard subdivisions, or
plăși (singular:
plasă). This particular one was named after the Argeșel, and had eleven villages in all—also including
Cetățeni and
Valea Mare-Pravăț. Muscel's social composition was revealed in July 1774: upon the end of
war in Eastern Europe, Wallachia was briefly occupied by the
Russian Empire, and a Russian official by the name of Tsurikov was tasked with conducting a fiscal census. It records 62 households of
scutelnici (who did not owe any tax), and notes that they still owned the village land. These families preserved their status beyond that moment, and until 1835. During the mid-19th century, Mățău was threatened with devastation by a local brigand,
Radu Anghel. One local legend is that he was ultimately persuaded into disengaging by a local peasant, Simon of Suslănești; The Kingdom increased the pace of institutional modernization; in the 1890s, its
Education Minister,
Spiru Haret, directed Muscel's teaching staff to provide for the peasants' cultivation and social emancipation. As a result, Mățău had a school library (rural Muscel's second-largest in 1902), and from 1901 a students' cafeteria. The local school, whose main teacher was Ion Vișoianu, was successful in promoting social advancement. In a September 1930 article prompted by the alumni reunion, novelist
Cezar Petrescu argued that they included "three physicians, six secondary-school professors, four magistrates, seven officers, one veterinarian, three lawyers, eleven priests, thirty-six primary-school teachers, [and] two high-ranking clerks in the
ministry of finance". A similar influence was exercised by Nicolae Cristescu, a Mățău native who taught at the school in Goleștii Badii,
Topoloveni; his students included
Ion Mihalache, the future agrarian politician, and
Mihai Antonescu,
Deputy Premier during World War II. Muscel became a theater of war shortly after
Romania entered World War I, when the country was invaded by the
Central Powers. The scene of several aerial dogfights and repeated shelling, Mățău was also a destination for the refugee citizens of Câmpulung, and eventually occupied by the Central Powers during the
massive defeats of late 1916. The villages were taken by the
Bavarian Army's
12th Infantry Division, after heavy fighting, on November 30. Over the next two years, the occupiers ransacked Suslănești, including by cutting down centennial
walnut trees, which had been planted by the Jumăreas. Many natives of the commune continued to fight for Romania after the withdrawal into
Western Moldavia (to 1918), and then in the
Hungarian–Romanian War (1919). Their sacrifice was commemorated by the authorities of
Greater Romania in 1922, when a war monument, done by sculptor Dumitru Mățăoanu, was unveiled in Mățău. Meanwhile, Simon of Suslănești had become patriarch of the Simon (later Simonescu) clan. His grandsons include
Dan Simonescu, a Romanian literary historian and bibliographer, The former, born in 1902, recalls spending his childhood "among the peasants of Suslănești", "with a sort of liberty that was rarely impinged upon by pedagogic principles." The interwar political scene brought new forces on the political scene, including Mihalache's Muscel-based
Peasants' Party. Its core membership included schoolteacher Gheorghe Vișoiu, originally from Mățău, though his political career only peaked after he moved to
Olt County. The movement for social and cultural uplift was continued locally by schoolteacher Ion Gh. Nicolaescu (known as Nicolaescu-Mățău), who, together with other village intellectuals, founded the magazine
Muscelul Nostru, put out from Câmpulung in 1929–1942. Following
general elections in December 1928, Mihalache's new
National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) took power in Romania, including control of the
Prefectures. The office of Prefect in Muscel County went to Alexandru Mușetescu, a Mățău native. During his tenure, he was criticized for not drilling into the hill to provide Câmpulung with a new source of water, since the existing sources were contaminated by
lime. In 1930, under decentralizing laws favored by the PNȚ, "Pravăț" was established as a separate commune, with mayors retained for each of the eleven villages absorbed into it. This structure grouped Suslănești, Mățău, Surbănești (formerly part of Mățău), and Valea Mare, as well as villages in present-day
Lerești and
Stoenești. Under this regime, Mățău built a new communal stable, a cattle market, and several
gravel roads (one of which led to
Jugur). In January 1933, a
bobsleigh competition was held on Mățău Hill, for the "Machelaru Cup". The administrative situation was reversed by later governments: Suslănești was administered as a separate commune, and remained a regional center of the PNȚ. This was reported by
Dreptatea newspaper during the local elections of Muscel in June 1936; the same newspaper also claimed that, in order to win a majority of votes, the
National Liberals threatened locals that, should they vote Peasantist, the commune would be disestablished by order of the Prefect. In September of that year, the PNȚ study circle in Câmpulung invited doctrinaire
Mihai Ralea to lecture for the peasants of Suslănești and Lerești.
World War II and after From 1939, Romania was a single-party state, ruled upon by
King Carol II and his
National Renaissance Front (FRN). In the political and administrative reorganization which followed, Mățău and Suslănești were separate communes, both included in a new
plasă, named after
Radu Negru. In December 1939, their respective FRN secretaries were Gh. I. Vișoianu and Nae D. Vlădău. Muscel had been merged into the larger regional unit,
Ținutul Bucegi, whose Royal Resident,
Gheorghe Alexianu, set himself the goal of building a new bridge on the highway linking Mățău to
Boteni. Around the same time, the Romanian Social Service, the regime's organization for charity work, established a "command center" in Mățău, which also had its own village team, under Commandant Cecilia Spirescu. Câmpulung and its immediate surroundings were affected by an earthquake in January 1940. Its causes were unknown at the time, but one theory suggested shifts within the Mățău Hill bedrock. Heavy rainfall that July reportedly caused a major landslide in Suslănești, with "enormous panic and frantic flight of the population." Months later, the downfall of the FRN regime and its replacement with
Ion Antonescu's dictatorship also brought a reestablishment of the counties, with military or civilian commissioners as their Prefects. In May 1942, Antonescu's appointment in Muscel, General Teodor Nicolau, announced that he intended to develop Mățău, Suslănești and Boteni into a hub of intensive horticulture. Suslănești was again merged into Mățău commune; its other
census-designated places of 1941 were Călulești, Cocenești, and Melcești (the latter name disappeared from public memory in later decades). During the
communist period, Muscel was merged into the
Argeș Region. Mățău and Suslănești were merged by government order in 1956, despite some local opposition. This reticence pushed the authorities to select a new name, "Mioarele" (from
mioare, "young sheep", alluding to the region's background in animal husbandry). Aluniș was attached to the commune only in 1967. In December 1958, the paving of roads linking Mățău and Câmpulung was assigned to volunteers from the
Workers' Youth, including from the village branch. After being the recipients of a
land reform in late 1944, which liquidated the Georgescu and Andreescu estates, the peasants of Mioarele were included in the
collectivization of farmlands. By 1972, the state agricultural enterprise of Câmpulung was running two collective farms on commune grounds: one called "Mioarele", which focused on animal husbandry, and one called "Suslănești", which was primarily an orchard. The latter formed part of a state program to encourage the reclamation of unused land for tree cultivation; the "Argeș Tree Reservoir", established in the 1960s, included the commune, alongside areas of Valea Mare, Lerești, and
Rucăr. By 1977, Mioarele was also home to a
Centrocoop supermarket and consumers' cooperative. A poets' society named after Mușatescu was established in the commune in October 1975, and recruited in its ranks "some 25 members [...] aged 15 to 76"; it put out anthologies of its work in 1977 and 1989. The archeological digs, meanwhile, were continued and enhanced by Flaminu Mîrțu, director of the Câmpulung Museum. Mioarele was mentioned in the news after the
Romanian Revolution of 1989—in September 2005, the portion of DN73 linking it to
Mioveni was damaged by
massive floods. In March of the following year, the road was blocked by picketers from the
ARO factory in Câmpulung, who had not received their salaries for months after privatization. In 2007, investors Dorin Mirea and Gabriel Marcu inaugurated the only ski slope of Argeș, located at Mățău-Chilii. In the early 2020s, Gheorghe Șucu went public with complaints that the commune was not realizing its potential in tourism on account of having no running water. As he explained in 2021, wells had been drilled, but no water could be located into the bedrock. Also that year, the ski slope's seasonal opening was postponed after the
snow groomer was discovered to be unusable, allegedly due to theft of its parts. ==Notes==