The Rule of Augustine, a composite formula for religious life, was one of the products of the multi-faceted religious reform movement in western Europe in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Part of its appeal to those wishing to live a religious life was its flexibility and adaptability to a variety of different types of community. The abbey of St Ruf Tripoli was a foundation of the long-established Augustinian community of St Ruf at Avignon, of which it functioned as a daughter-house. It is treated in a separate chapter because, uniquely among houses of canons regular in the Crusader States, it continued to be under the oversight of the mother-house in the West.