The three surviving religious poems by Wace show that he was a major poet well before he undertook the Roman de Brut, and a recognised scholar. It would be difficult to find three works more different from each other than the Vie de sainte Marguerite, the Conception Nostre Dame and the Vie de saint Nicolas: from a relatively simple, linear narrative to a tripartite exposition and commentary, and ending with an episodic compendium of miracles. However, as pointed out by Elizabeth Francis (p. xvii), all of Wace's poems have ‘un intérêt d'actualité’: the Vie de sainte Marguerite is composed at the beginning of a movement of dissemination of the cult of the saint; the Conception Nostre Dame was commissioned at the height of a theological dispute regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; while the Vie de saint Nicolas is written at a time where the cult of the saint was expanding eastwards from Normandy. In all three cases, Wace appears to have been the first writer to work on these subjects in the French language, and in all three cases, he introduces a new element to the traditional accounts. Margaret is confirmed as the protector of childbirth and women in labour; the Virgin is depicted not just as pure and good, but also free from the original sin from her conception; Nicholas receives a fresh attribute, that of the baptismal figure. Wace clearly had his finger on the intellectual and religious pulse of his time.

Even though the Nicolas appears to have been commissioned by a layman, it is likely that dissemination occurred through ecclesiastical channels; the patron for the Conception must certainly have been religious, and influential. The abbeys of Caen had close connections with England, at a time when Anglo-Norman interests spanned the Channel, and all three of Wace's religious poems have a connection with England; a very strong one in the case of the Conception Nostre Dame. In particular, a nexus of coincidences would seem to point to some link betweenWace and Winchester, possibly in relation to the entourage of Bishop Henry of Blois.