“…we find that the authors of the major codices and their commentators were not providing practical religious practice, but rather were…”

In general, we find that the authors of the major codices and their commentators were not providing practical religious practice, but rather were writing for scholars to enable them to issue their own rulings based on the codices or in-depth study of the codices’ sources.

Benjamin Brown, “‘Soft Stringency’ in the Mishnah Berurah: Jurisprudential, Social, and Idealogical Aspects of a Halachic Formulation,” Contemporary Jewry 27 (2007), 13.