In the Premonstratensian Statutes of 1290 one finds written the solemn formula that each medieval English white canon pronounced in the chapterhouse of his abbey on the day of his profession. The novice offered himself to the abbot and community and vowed to live the monastic lifestyle, to undertake a process of self-reformation, stability in the same abbey, to renounce the world and all earthly belongings, and to be chaste. He committed himself to a life of perfect obedience ‘in Christo’, according to the Gospel and the Rule of St Augustine. The ascetical and evangelical demands which a white canon freely contracted in uttering his life-long Suscipe to God and monastery, were truly difficult undertakings. Though all religious could avail themselves of the aids offered by faith in divine assistance and the spiritual observances embodied within the monastic life, the majority of them were doubtless prone to error of one degree or another, fickleness, and backsliding from the order's regulations and the path leading to perfection. The acquisition of the monastic habit alone most definitely ‘does not make the monk’. However the fact of man's sinfulness (Humanum est errare) was certainly taken into account by those who devised the monastic life. The process of eliminating and preventing the accumulation of imperfections within monasteries, included the practice of visitation. With the apparent centralisation of authority within the three English Premonstratensian circaries, the commissary-general became almost entirely responsible for conducting the visitations.