Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia
Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia is known as the first woman in the world to earn a university degree, having obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Padua in 1678.
The natural daughter of the nobleman Giovanni Battista Cornaro, procurator of San Marco, and the commoner Zanetta Boni, she was born in Venice in 1646, the fifth of seven children. She was enrolled in the golden register of nobles at the age of 18 when her father paid 100,000 ducats to elevate her and her siblings to the patriciate. She developed an early passion for studies, which was encouraged by her father, who was determined to use Elena's talents to restore the prestige of the Cornaro family. To this end, he entrusted her education to theologian Giovanni Battista Fabris, Latinist Giovanni Valier, Hellenist Alvise Gradenigo, theology professor Felice Rotondi, and Rabbi Shemel Aboaf, from whom Elena learned Hebrew. She also studied Spanish, French, Arabic, Aramaic, and achieved a profound musical education. Additionally, she deepened her knowledge in eloquence, dialectics, and philosophy, taking lessons in the latter from Carlo Rinaldini, a professor at the University of Padua and a friend of her father.
Alongside her passion for study, Elena nurtured a genuine religious vocation, which led her to become a Benedictine oblate at the age of nineteen. This decision disappointed her parents, who intended for her to marry, but it spared them the dismay of a monastic seclusion and allowed the young woman to live according to the Benedictine rule. In 1677, she applied for a doctorate in theology, but the chancellor of the University of Padua, Cardinal Gregorio Barbarigo, firmly refused her request. Thanks to Rinaldini's mediation, Elena Lucrezia was finally able to graduate on June 25, 1678, in philosophy, and not in theology as she initially wished.
Elena, who had conducted her studies entirely in Venice, moved to Padua only after her graduation, taking residence at Palazzo Cornaro, near the Basilica of Saint Anthony. Her already frail constitution had been further weakened by study and ascetic austerities; she frequently fell ill, often for long periods, and eventually died in July 1684. She was buried in the Church of Santa Giustina in Padua.
For a long time, her family regarded her as a phenomenon to be exhibited, an erudite woman capable of delivering philosophical dissertations and conversing in Latin. Her solitude was surrounded by astonishment, marked by exceptional intellectual gifts in a woman's body. However, for Piscopia, these gifts were not a means of asserting female dignity or the right to compete with men in the intellectual field. Her degree was merely a brief glimpse that was quickly closed, as evidenced by the fact that it was not until 1732 that another woman in Italy, Laura Bassi, earned a university degree.
In 1773, Caterina Dolfin donated a statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia to the University of Padua, which is now placed at the foot of the Cornaro staircase in the Old Courtyard of Palazzo Bo. It serves as a tribute to the world's first woman graduate, but today it also stands as a symbol of female emancipation.
In Elena's name, the University of Padua established the 'Elena Cornaro' University Center in 2018, which promotes research and training activities from a gender perspective and aims to raise greater awareness of gender issues within the University of Padua and society.
