 Historians have adopted more sophisticated approaches.They emphasize that penance and reconciliation were integral parts of medieval life, so an anointed king's excommunication was more disturbing for Henry's contemporaries than his act of penance at Canossa.Henry, as Schutz concludes, "cleverly maneuvered the pope into a position in which he had to absolve him", but Gregory VII reduced him "from Vicar of Christ to being a mere layman".