[1] The handbook was intended for the use of parish priests in hearing confession and determining penances.
Its transmission in the manuscripts (see below) seems to bear witness to Wulfstan's profound concern with these sacraments and their regulation, an impression which is similarly borne out by his Canons of Edgar, a guide of ecclesiastical law also targeted at priests.
The handbook is a derivative work, based largely on earlier vernacular representatives of the penitential genre such as the Scrifboc (or Confessionale Pseudo-Ecgberhti) and the Old English Penitential (or Paenitentiale Pseudo-Ecgberhti).
[2] Nevertheless, a unique quality seems to lie in the more or less systematic way it seeks to integrate various points of concern, including the proper formulae for confession and instructions on the administration of confession, the prescription of penances and their commutation.
For three Old English texts, here numbered III, V and VI, no specific relationship to earlier authorities can be pinpointed, except in individual passages.