It has long been known that Chaucer translated portions of Pope Innocent III's De Miseria Humane Conditionis for use in the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale, but his artistic reasons for doing so have never been determined. If the translated passages from the De Miseria were short and all in one place, there might be no compelling reason to search for an artistic purpose: Chaucer may simply have wanted to insert a passage from a work that he was translating at the time out of his love for authorities—a love shared by almost all medieval writers. But the facts are that Chaucer made more extensive use of the De Miseria in the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale (nearly fifty lines) than anywhere else in his works, that the translated passages are from five different chapters and two different books in the De Miseria, and that they are scattered in five places throughout the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale. It is therefore highly likely that Chaucer added the passages from the De Miseria for particular artistic reasons, and it is the purpose of this paper to determine what those reasons were.