brought Theophilos to safety in the nearby village of Chiliokomon. During the battle, he received heavy wounds, and according to the chronicle of Symeon Logothetes, he died of them five days later, on 27 July 838. He was buried in his palace in Constantinople, which lay near the Cistern of Aspar and which became a monastery named after him, now traditionally identified with the Kefeli Mosque. Possible life after 838 The chronicles of Genesios and Theophanes Continuatus (and following them Skylitzes and Zonaras), however, report that he survived his wounds, allegedly being miraculously cured after renouncing iconoclasm at the behest of some monks. The same sources report that after Theophilos's death, he assumed the overall command of the Byzantine army and was appointed a member of the regency council for the infant new emperor Michael III () along with Theoktistos and Bardas. His standing was so high that the populace is said to have acclaimed him as emperor at the Hippodrome, but he refused to accept the post. The same writers report that he played an important role in the restoration of the icons, and that he became a before falling out with Theoktistos, being accused of lèse-majesté, and retiring from public life to his estates. According to the same sources, in the late 850s, he saved the Emperor's life in another battle at Anzen and died shortly after. Traditional scholarship has largely accepted this account, but some modern historians have expressed doubts as to its veracity. The Belgian Byzantinist Henri Grégoire was the first to highlight its incompatibility with the narrative of Symeon Logothetes, speculating that it was a later invention, possibly carried out by the monks of the Monastery of Manuel, who venerated him as a saint and tried to mitigate his iconoclast past. Warren Treadgold, who considers Symeon Logothetes more reliable, also dismissed the reports of Manuel's post-838 survival as invented. Other modern scholars continue to support the possibility of his continued life after 838, especially given the existence of a seal, dated to the mid-9th century, which names "Manuel , imperial , , and of the Emperor", which seems to confirm both his survival into at least the early years of Michael III's reign, and his reported role as a member of the regency. Even so, the stories about his activities, and in particular his role in the restoration of the icons and the alleged second