It was not a mere means of escape from work and responsibility.

In the early golden age of monasticism only men and women with a vocation, that is to say a real genius for monastic life, entered convents.

Moreover, when there they worked very hard with hand and brain, as well as with soul, and so they got variety of occupation, which is as good as a holiday.
The basis of wise St Benedict's Rule was a nicely adjusted combination of variety with regularity; for he knew human nature.

Thus monks and nuns did not find the services monotonous, and indeed regarded them as by far the best part of the day.

But in the later Middle Ages, when Chaucer lived, young people had begun to enter monastic houses rather as a profession than as a vocation.