The compiler of the Quesnelliana has avoided inclusion of doubtful or spurious documents, like the so-called Symmachean forgeries and the Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis.

This earliest Latin collection of fourth- and fifth-century conciliar canons was previously known to scholars as either the versio Isidori or the Collectio Maasseniana, but is today referred to as the Corpus canonum Africano-Romanum.

[3] The Africano-Romanum collection/translation predates the competing fifth-century Latin translation that Dionysius Exiguus referred to as the prisca (upon which the Collectio canonum Sanblasiana is based).

French historians then developed the theory that the collection originated at Arles, which was thought to have been something of a clearing house for canonical materials in the early sixth century.

Insofar as the Quesnelliana is a textbook on the controversies that beset the early Latin church, one might expect that it would not have been of much use to bishops after the seventh century, when the last vestiges of Eutychianism and Monophysitism were suppressed in West.

The Quesnelliana played a particularly important role in the spread of Leo's letters in Western canonistic literature, and was notably instrumental in the compilations of pseudo-Isidore for just this reason.

By the mid-eighth century, the Quesnelliana had secured its place as an important lawbook within the Frankish episcopate, for whom it served as the primary source-book during the influential council of Verneuil in 755, over which Pepin the Short presided.

Thus, despite its probably being generally perceived as an archaic document that had much to say about doctrinal controversies that were no longer relevant, the Quesnelliana continued to exert considerable influence on canonical activities in Francia throughout the eighth and ninth centuries.