On the accession of Manuel I, he received a basilikos logos from Michael Italikos. He hailed Manuel as a young renewer of the old empire of Byzantium, brilliant and hard to praise. His birth was impeccably imperial, taking place at the moment of Ioannes II's accession, a presage of his own. At the age of twelve, he continued, Manuel had seen a vision of the Theotokos predicting he would be emperor, and other omens. He was trained as a general by Ioannes II in all his campaigns, especially at Neokaisareia, where Manuel had rallied the whole army. The climax of the speech was the narration of the three terrible deaths (Alexios the co-emperor, Andronikos the sebastokrator, Ioannes II himself), which led to the accession of Manuel, then his proclamation in Cilicia and his return with the army to allay the panic which had set in in the capital. He arrived there as a veritable image of God himself