The account of the Monk in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is naturally of interest to the monastic historian, if only as being by far the most familiar (and therefore most influential) picture of a monk in the whole of English literature. Quite apart from this, however, the short description contains two points to intrigue the exegete and the historian.

1. It is assumed by everyone, the Ellesmere illustrator included, that Chaucer's monk is a black (or Benedictine) monk, not a Cistercian or (still more emphatically) an Austin canon. Why then the references to the rules of St Maurus and St Augustine?

Annotators point out very correctly that St Maurus, whose only authentic appearance is as a boy-monk at Subiaco in die Dialogues of St Gregory (ii, cc. 3, 6, 7), has never been claimed as the author of a monastic rule, nor has any Chaucerian scholar or monastic historian, to my knowledge, discovered a clear parallel to Chaucer's phrase. It is also common knowledge that according to a venerable legend (which in Chaucer's day was universally accepted and was in fact not then susceptible of attack) Maurus had migrated to France on St Benedict's death, taking the Rule with him, and had established a ‘Benedictine’ monastery at Glanfeuil (the most readily accessible of the many critical treatments of the legend is perhaps that of Dom H. Leclercq in the Dictionnaire d' Archéologie chrétienne, s.v.). In consequence, St Maurus was always regarded as the patriarch and patron of French monachism, later giving his name to the celebrated reformed Congregation of the seventeenth century.