Pietro Polani

Pietro Polani († 1148 in Caorle, near Venice ) was the 36th Doge of Venice. He reigned from 1130 to 1147.

Polani, who was married to his first marriage with adelasa Michiel, the daughter of his predecessor, was elected in spite of the protest of the Dandolo and Badoer to the Doge. His opponents saw in the choice of a violation of a decree by which you absolutely wanted to prevent a heritability of the Office.

His reign was characterized mainly by external threats to the Republic. Between 1133 and 1135, the Hungarians conquered important points on the Dalmatian arts, such as Sebenica, Trogir and Split.

1141 tries to expand at the expense of Venice its territory and its sphere of influence, as well as to undermine the salt monopoly of the Venetians Padua. At the same time it came to border violations Venetian territory on the south by Ancona. Domestically, people reacted in Venice on the complicated and dangerous situation with the establishment of the Council of Elders ( sapientes ) who had to advise the Doge in his decisions. The informal committee Savi mentioned included not only representatives of the previously dominant nobility also by the now rich bankers and merchants. These gradually formed a new oligarchy that took part in the power of the state and increasingly restricted the rights of the Doge in the course of the following centuries. One of the first joint decisions of Savi and Doge was the waiver of participation in the Second Crusade.

New influence in the eastern Mediterranean won the Venetians by their aid to Byzantium against the Normans under the leadership of Roger II While Badoer, Falier, Michiel and Morosini had vehemently opposed a support of Byzantium, as the patriarch of Enrico Dandolo, the opposite a pact with the schismatics ranted. But even excommunication by the pope could not be dissuaded from his policies, which eventually brought the Venetians as a reward valuable trading rights in Chios, Cyprus, Rhodes and Candia ( Crete) Polani. Polani himself soon had to leave due to an illness his son and his brother, and early return to Venice, where he died soon after the lead of the fleet. The triumph of his fleet at the Battle of Cape Matapan in 1148 on, as the Norman fleet under Giorgio of Antioch was defeated, he did not live.

Pietro Polani died February to July 1148 and was buried in the monastery of San Cipriano at Murano.