The political structure in Venice reacted to the complicated and dangerous situation by establishing a council of wise men (sapientes) to advise the Doge.

This gradually formed a new oligarchy that participated in ruling the state and during the ensuing centuries increasingly restricted the rights of the Doge.

Venice won new influence in the eastern Mediterranean by assisting the Byzantine Empire against the Italo-Normans led by Roger II of Sicily.

Many of the noble Venetian families were violently opposed to supporting Byzantium, and the Patriarch Enrico Dandolo fulminated against making a pact with the "schismatic" East.

But not even an excommunication of Polani by the pope could convince the Venetians to forgo the valuable commercial rights they received in Chios, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Candia (Crete) through their alliance with the Byzantine Empire.