ABSTRACT
Among the three principal medieval musical genres now commonly associated with the repertory of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the conductus has habitually received less- scholarly attention than the organa and motets from the same sources. The only surviving contemporaneous report of the Orléans riot that prompted the composition of Aurelianis civitas occurs in the Chronica maiora of the English Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris. The initial victims of deadly violence were students, young men engaged in programs of study at the budding university schools in Orléans. In both Matthew Paris's chronicle and Aurelianis civitas the attention devoted to students is conspicuous and significant. Any allusion to education in the context of thirteenth-century France would immediately bring the University of Paris to mind. By the end of the twelfth century, educational resources in Paris had grown into a large phalanx of schools, staffed by masters who had migrated to the city to teach for pay.
