are, and went through the philosophy of the schools, thorny as it then was. After many years spent in study, she took her degrees at Padua, and was perhaps the first lady that ever was made a doctor. She was not excelled by any of the rabbies in her knowledge of Hebrew, and wrote Greek with great elegance, as her letters in those two languages preserved in the Venetian public library can evince. She was admitted of the university of Rome, where she had the title of Humble given her, as she had at Padua that of Unalterable. She deserved, they say, both, since all her learning had not inspired her with the least vanity, nor was any thing capable of disturbing that calmness of spirit, which she always employed in the deepest thinking. She made a vow of perpetual virginity; and though all means were used to persuade her to marry, and even a dispensation from her vow obtained of the pope, she yet remained inflexible. She fasted often, and spent her whole time in study and devotion, excepting those hours in which she was obliged to receive visits; often saying, when, in obedience to her father, she saw company, "this will be the death of me."
All persons of quality and distinction, who passed through Venice, were more solicitous to see her than the other curiosities of that superb city. The cardinals de Bouillon and d'Etrees, were ordered by the French king to call, in their way to Italy, upon Lucretia Cornaro, at Venice, to examine whether the report of her was true; and they found that her parts and learning were answerable to the high reputation she had acquired all over Europe. At length, her indefatigable application to her books, to those especially which were in Greek and Hebrew, impaired her constitution so much, that she fell into the illness of which she died.
