 His talents as a minstrel won the favor of King Philip Augustus, and for some time he freely indulged in the pleasures of the world, after which he became a Cistercian monk at the monastery of Froidmont in the Diocese of Beauvais about the year 1190.From being a self-indulgent man of the world he became a model of piety and mortification in the monastery.Whatever time was not consumed in monastic exercises he devoted to ecclesiastical studies and, after his ordination to the priesthood, to preaching and writing.