et himself to win the leading men in
the capital over to the cause of the younger brother, and, by the time
Manuel was prepared to enter Constantinople, had secured for him a
popular welcome and the surrender of Isaac's claims.[372]

In 1147, the famous eikon of S. Demetrius of Thessalonia was transferred
from the magnificent basilica dedicated to the saint in that city to the
Pantokrator. This was done by the order of Manuel Comnenus, at the
request of Joseph, then abbot of the monastery, and in accordance with
the wishes of the emperor's parents, the founders of the House.[373] It
was a great sacrifice to demand of the Macedonian shrine, and by way of
compensation a larger and more artistic eikon of S. Demetrius, in silver
and gold, was hung beside his tomb. But Constantinople rejoiced in the
greater sanctity and virtue of the earlier picture, and when tidings of
its approach were received, the whole fraternity of the Pantokrator,
with the senate and an immense crowd of devout persons, went seven miles
out from the city to hail the arrival of the image, and to bear it in
triumph to its new abode, with psalms and hymns, lighted tapers,
fragrant incense, and the gleam of soldiers' spears. Thus, it was
believed, the monastery gained more beauty and security, the dynasty of
the Comneni more strength, the Roman Empire and the Queen of cities an
invisible but mighty power to keep enemies afar off.

In 1158 Bertha, the first wife of Manuel Comnenus, and sister-in-law of
the Emperor Conrad of Germany, was buried in the church.[374] Twenty-two
years later, Manuel Comnenus himself was laid in its herooen in a
splendid sarcophagus of black marble with a cover cut in seven
protuberances.[375] Beside the tomb was placed the porphyry slab upon
which the body of Christ was supposed to have been laid after His
deposition from the cross. The slab was placed there in commemoration of
the fact that when it was brought from Ephesus to Constantinople, Manuel
carried it on his broad shoulders all the way up the hill from the
harbour of the Bucoleon (at Tchatlady Kapou), to the private chapel of
the imperial residence near S. Sophia.[376] Nicetas Choniates thought
the aspect of the tomb and of its surroundings very significant. The
seven protuberances on its cover represented the seven-hilled city which
had been the emperor's throne; the porphyry slab recalled the mighty
deeds which he whose form lay so still and silent in the grave had
wr