As manuals for penitents increasingly brought self-examination tools into the hands of the laity at the close of the thirteenth century, inviting penitents to explore their consciences at a remove from their confessors, a new possibility – and potential threat to the established Church – was being discussed: could the text act as a surrogate for the priest's interrogation? And could the written word stand in for a spoken confession? Such questions were not entirely new; in the twelfth century, and across the North Sea, Caesarius of Heisterbach had told the remarkable story of a clerk who had confessed through writing alone – albeit under extraordinary circumstances. According to Caesarius, the man had kept a deadly, soul-destroying sin hidden, terrified of the social repercussions of confessing it. A concerned priest suggested that the clerk write it down rather than speak it aloud, and as soon as the clerk did this, the words disappeared. The now-blank paper was a sign, for Caesarius, that the sin had been wiped clean from the clerk's soul. For Caesarius, the words’ disappearance and the absolution it represented were miracles signifying God's boundless grace.

But as confessional material moved increasingly into lay hands, the possibility of a ‘long-distance confession’ – sending the priest a written statement rather than meeting him in person – started to be perceived as a real threat to the Church's power. The Church had, for years, encouraged some penitents to keep written lists of their sins to use as a prompt during confession, but sending such a list as a surrogate was deemed unacceptable under most circumstances. The Manuel des péchés warns, ‘Ne par escrit ne vus poez / Vus confesser de vos pechez, / Si present vus memes ne saez / E de buche au prestre cuntez’ (‘You cannot confess your sins through writing if you, yourself, are not present, and recounting your sins by mouth’).