Paréage of Andorra 1278

Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is a landlocked country on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees in Southwestern Europe, bordered by France to the north and Spain to the south. Believed to have been created by Charlemagne, Andorra was ruled by the count of Urgell until 988, when it was transferred to the Diocese of Urgell. The present principality was formed by a charter in 1278. It is currently headed by two co-princes: the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain, and the president of France. Its capital and largest city is Andorra la Vella.

Andorra is the sixth-smallest state in Europe, with an area of 468 square kilometres (181 sq mi) and a population of approximately 87,486. The Andorran people are a Romance ethnic group closely related to Catalans. Andorra is the world's 16th-smallest country by land and 11th-smallest by population. Its capital, Andorra la Vella, is the highest capital city in Europe, at an elevation of 1,023 metres (3,356 feet) above sea level. The official language is Catalan, but Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also commonly spoken.

Pere d'Urtx (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈuɾtʃ] OORTCH) was Bishop of Urgell from 1269 to 1293. He became the first Episcopal Co-Prince of Andorra when he signed the paréage establishing joint-sovereignty over the territory with Roger-Bernard III, Count of Foix in 1278.

The paréage ended almost a century of conflict over the territory between successive Bishops of Urgell, on the one hand, and Viscounts of Castellbò and Counts of Foix, on the other, and effectively established the modern state of Andorra. He was archdeacon of Prats and became the bishop of Urgell on 3 November 1269. He attended the provincial councils of 1274, 1279 and 1292.

In Medieval France a paréage or pariage was a feudal treaty recognising joint sovereignty over a territory by two rulers, who were on an equal footing, pari passu; compare peer. On a familial scale, paréage could also refer to the equal division of lands and the titles they brought between sons of an inheritance.

Such a power-sharing contract could be signed between two secular rulers or, more often, by a secular and an ecclesiastic ruler, as happened in the most famous case—the Act of paréage of 1278, which served as the legal basis for the Principality of Andorra and was signed by the Count of Foix and Viscount of Castellbo and the Bishop of Urgell. According to the act, the Count and the Bishop were to receive taxes in alternating years, while jointly appointing local representatives to administer justice, and they were to refrain from making war within Andorra (where they were each nevertheless allowed to levy soldiers). The wording of a paréage, an exercise in defining reciprocity without sacrificing suzerainty, was the special domain of ministerial lawyers, who were produced in the universities from the late eleventh century.