CORNARO PISCOPIA, ELENA LUCREZIA (1646–1684)

CORNARO PISCOPIA, ELENA LUCREZIA (1646–1684), first female university graduate. Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, born into a prominent Venetian noble family, was the first female to graduate from a university. She early manifested her learning and piety and studied theology and philosophy with tutors in Venice for many years. After performing brilliantly in a public disputation, an academic debate in which the disputant defended arguments against all comers, in Venice on 30 May 1677 she asked, with her father's support, to be examined for the doctorate of theology from the University of Padua because Italian universities did not confer bachelor's degrees. Obtaining a degree by examination without attending university lectures was unusual but possible in the Italian university system. A number of men, including the famous humanist Desiderius Erasmus at the University of Turin in 1506, had done the same. The archbishop of Padua, chancellor of the university and the person who conferred degrees, objected, but agreed that she might be examined for a doctorate of philosophy. The College of Doctors of Arts and Medicine examined her; she discussed issues based on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and Physics, the required university texts in logic and natural philosophy on which professors lectured and on which doctoral examinations were based. The college voted unanimously in her favor, and she received the doctorate of philosophy on 25 June 1678. But she did not establish a precedent to be followed. A Paduan professor immediately asked if his daughter might be examined for the doctorate of philosophy, but she was rebuffed. Cornaro Piscopia wrote a number of works on religious and philosophical topics and poetry, always in Latin. But ill health soon limited her studies. She died in 1684.

A large modern statue of Cornaro Piscopia in the entrance of the main university building in Padua, where her doctoral examination was held, commemorates her accomplishment. She represents the highest academic achievement of a woman to that point in history, as well as the limits imposed by society. The next female university graduate was Laura Bassi (1711–1778), a highborn Bolognese woman, who obtained a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Bologna on 12 May 1732 and taught at the university there from 1732 to 1738. She was the first woman to teach at a university. The third was Maria Pellegrina Amoretti, who earned a doctorate in law from the University of Pavia on 25 June 1777.

CORNARO PISCOPIA, ELENA LUCREZIA (1646–1684)

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