The early penitentials share a common goal, namely to facilitate a subjective, didactic process of penitential discipline that took into consideration the circumstances of the sin and the sinner. Just as a physician uses discernment to determine the proper treatment for illness, so too should those who administer penance ‘skillfully consider the age and sex of the sinner, what instruction has been given, what fortitude is visible, by what burdens he has been compelled to sin, by what passion he has been attacked, how long he has remained indulgent, by what weeping and suffering he is afflicted, and how detached he is from worldly things’. The goal was not simply to punish, but to ‘accept the sinner and by admonishing, urging, teaching, [and] instructing, lead him to penance, curtail his error, correct his vices, and bring it about that God becomes favorable to him after his conversion’. This intent is key for understanding the manuals’ social logic and their importance as voices within a knowledge community that transcends boundaries of genre, geography, and sometimes language. Time and again, these little books of penance reveal their authors’ belief that they were an integral part of such a knowledge community, from which they drew a wide range of ideas and practices. Clearly, these manuals were not produced in vacuums, but represent an active engagement within broader discourses about sin, reconciliation, and salvation in relation to the temporal realities of the people who made up early medieval Christian communities. By considering these realities, the handbooks complicate and clarify early medieval social histories of childhood, sex and gender, sexuality, status, and violence.

Their value for these aspects of medieval social history lies in their approach. Rather than schedules of rigid, mandatory punishments, each of these handbooks provides flexible recommendations for correcting various sins in relation to an individual's age, sex, and status, as well as the particular circumstances of his or her transgression, including intent, recidivism, and its effect on others. The often-ambiguous language and broad categories that they use are integral components of this flexibility, as is the presentation of multiple possible penances for the same sin. Rather than uncertainty or contradictions, these qualities provide options for disciplining individual penitents based on their specific transgression, thus illustrating the complex underlying ideas that influenced their authors and in turn their use.