Pareja

Pareja is a town in the Alcarria of central Spain whose history was closely tied to the bishops of Cuenca. In 1198 King Alfonso VIII granted Pareja and several neighbouring villages to the bishopric. The bishops held the town as a lordship and used it as a residence as well as a place for diocesan business. Church assemblies met here, and synodal constitutions for the diocese were published in the town's church in 1344 and again in 1534. The parish church of the Assumption dates largely from the sixteenth century; nearby stood the bishops' palace, rebuilt in the late eighteenth century. The town and its villages remained linked to the bishopric through much of the early modern period, making Pareja a small but significant centre of ecclesiastical authority in the rural Alcarria.