Hannah Fielding's Blog, page 107

The very bones of Venice: St Mark

No doubt you’ve heard of the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square) of Venice, which Napolean called ‘the drawing room of Europe’. You’re probably also familiar with the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco (St Mark’s Basilica), which lies at the piazza’s eastern end and is a stunning example of Italian Byzantine architecture. After all, these are world-renowned, and very popular with tourists visiting the city. But do you know why these great works of architecture are dedicated to this saint?

The saint in question is Mark, one of Christ’s disciples and author of the gospel of Mark. Given that Mark founded the Church of Alexandria (today part of the Coptic Orthodox Church), you may expect that it is the Egyptians who are most connected to this saint. Indeed, in Alexandria you find the St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, and in Cairo the St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, both shrines to Mark. But Venetians have their own special relationship with this saint – and the reason comes down to a matter of body snatching!

St Mark died in Alexandria (he was martyred there, having been dragged through the streets), and his remains were interred in the city. But in 828 Venetian merchants stole what remained of Mark. Supposedly, they buried his bones beneath pork and cabbage leaves, knowing that anyone searching their vessel would likely be Muslim and therefore reluctant to touch the pork and probe beneath.

Back in Venice, the patron saint to that point, St Theodore, was pushed aside in favour of Mark, and the Doge set men to work at once building a church fit to house the remains of a disciple of Christ. Come 1063, a new, better basilica was commissioned, but disaster struck: St Mark’s bones were missing! Legend tells that it was Mark himself who pointed the way to his remains by extending his arm from a pillar. He was laid to rest in a sarcophagus in the basilica.

Some believe that part of St Mark’s skeleton (the skull) remains in Alexandria’s St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, and other parts in the Cairo church. But certainly most, if not all, are in Venice. It is hoped that will continue to be the case…

Have you followed the story currently ‘hot on the presses’ in Britain about the remains of King Richard III? Since the bones of the monarch, who died in 1485, were discovered beneath a council car park, Westminster Abbey, York Minster and Leicester Cathedral have battled for the right to provide the final resting place of the king in a row that the Telegraph reports ‘is threatening to develop into a drama of Shakespearean proportions’.

So although the body-snatching element of St Mark’s tale is not quite in keeping with how one expects the earthly remains of a heavenly saint to be treated, at least his remains were not lost and buried under the concrete of a car park – and at least he can be at peace without people fighting over his remains.

The legend of the Bocolo

Think Venice, think romance – think romance, think rose! And so it’s little wonder that the Venetians have a festival especially dedicated to both love and the bocolo, the red rose.

To celebrate the patron saint of Venice, St Mark, on 25 April Venetians celebrate the Festa del Bocolo in which men give women a single rosebud to show their love. Why 25 April, and why a rose? The roots of the festival are found in legend…

So the story goes, a young Venetian woman called Maria fell in love with a young man named Tancredi. But the two were divided by their social classes: she the daughter of a Doge, he just a commoner – a troubadour. Of course the Doge was unimpressed by Tancredi as a suitor, and so Maria suggested that Tancredi win her father’s approval by demonstrating his valour. Tancredi duly went to war, and he impressed his comrades with his courage. But alas! (No doubt you saw this coming…) He was slain.

As he lay dying, in a rose garden, Tancredi gave his friend Orlando a rose that bore his blood. Orlanda brought the stained rose to Maria as a symbol of Tancredi’s everlasting love for her. Beautiful! And yet, sadly, not the end of the tale… The next day, 25 April, Maria was found dead in her bed, the rose lying over her heart.

I have written before about the poetry of Lady Caroline Blanche Elizabeth Lindsay, who wrote a beautiful collection of poetry inspired by Venice in the nineteenth century. Here is her depiction of Maria and Tancredi’s tragic love story (Orlando is renamed Roland here). Oh that fair red rose of love!

 

The Legend of the “Bocolo”

 

There lived a high-born maid in ancient time,

Who loved a minstrel famed for song and rhyme.

( Venice was young.)

Because of him her dark eyes flashed and burned,

Because of her his heart in sorrow yearned.

(O fair red rose of Love!)

 

He was so lowly-born they might not wed —

“Seek then the King of France,” the maiden

said.

( Venice was young.)

“Earn thou a soldier’s glory in the field,

So may my father to our pleading yield.”

(O fair red rose of Love!)

 

Thus, at her bidding, went the troubadour,

Forthwith enrolled to fight the paynim Moor;

( Venice was young!)

And soon from France the praises of him rang —

Tancred, the warrior brave, who sweetly sang.

(O fair red rose of Love!)

 

Southward at last came bands from Charlemayne,

Led by the peerless Roland and his train,

( Venice was young!)

And he sought out the maid. With tears, he sighed :

“Tancred is dead; clasped in my arms he died.

(O fair red rose of Love!)

 

“He breathed thy name. A rose-tree nigh he fell,

And plucked this flower for her he loved so well.

(Venice was young.)

How blest art thou, by him held dear and true —

The noblest soul that Roland ever knew.”

(O fair red rose of Love!)

 

The maiden spake not. Cold and white as snow,

She wept no tear, she gave no sign of woe.

( Venice was young.)

The next day dawned (St Mark’s), in death she lay,

And on her heart was found the rose, they say.

(O fair red rose of Love!)

 

Since, on San Marco’s morn, each year again,

For memory of those hapless lovers twain,

( Venice was young.)

Venetian youths, their ardent hearts to show,

A rosebud on the maid they court bestow.

(O fair red rose of Love!)

 

If you’re interested in St Mark, patron saint of Venice, look for my blog later this week on him.

Pizza: A slice of history

Last week I blogged on the history of that classic Italian food, pasta. But say ‘Italian cuisine’ to most people and their likely response is ‘pasta and pizza’.  Though we may not eat the two together, still they are traditionally paired as the most popular of Italian foods.

Pizza, of course, has been wholeheartedly embraced by the Western world – particularly in America.  But take it from one who’s spent plenty of time in Italy, such as when I researched my novel The Echoes of Love, once you’ve eaten true Italian pizza, no other kind will do!

 

 

Here are some ‘pizza facts’:

The first known documenting of the word pizza dates back to 997 AD. In the town of Gaeta in southern Italy it was written that a man gave the bishop twelve pizzas each Christmas, and twelve each Easter. Quite how one bishop ate twelve pizzas I don’t know!
The heart of pizza history beats in Naples, Italy. It was there that cooks first became brave enough to sample tomato on their flatbreads – since the discovery of the fruit in  America in the sixteenth century people had believed that because it is a member of the nightshade family it was therefore poisonous.
The world’s first pizzeria, Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba, was opened in Naples in 1830. You can still eat there today; see www.anticapizzeriaristoranteportalba.com!
Until the late nineteenth century, Italian pizza was generally a sweet, not savoury dish.
Legend tells that the Margherita pizza was invented in 1889 when a pizza maker from Naples wanted to make for Margherita of Savoy, the Queen consort of Italy, a pizza to represent the national colours: tomatoes for the red, mozzarella for the white and basil for the green.
Italian pizza ‘purists’ – of which there are many! – believe that only two kinds of pizza should be eaten: the Margherita and the Marinara, which is topped with oregano, garlic and extra virgin olive oil and is so called because it was made for sailors of the Bay of Napes by their wives (marinaras).
The first American pizzeria, Lombardi’s, opened in 1905 on Spring Street in lower Manhattan. (It later moved premises, but it still trades today and uses the original pizza oven.) Pizza had arrived in the US thanks to mass emigration (some five million Italians had moved there by the year 1900, the majority from the south). But it wasn’t until the Second World War that Allied troops occupying Italian territory really fell in love with pizza, and brought that love home with them.
The True Neapolitan Pizza Association (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) sets stringent rules for the creation of Neapolitan pizzas. These include kneading by hand, stretching to no more than 25 centimetres in diameter, and baking in a wood-fired oven. Some dedicated pizzerias in Naples make pizza-making something of a religion, going so far as to insist on only using San Marzano tomatoes from the slopes of Mount Vesuvius and to adding toppings in a clockwise direction!
Probably the swankiest pizza in the world is on the menu at Nino’s Bellissima Pizza in Manhattan. The pizza is topped with caviar, lobster, salmon and wasabi paste, and will set you back no less than $1,000 dollars. Yes, that’s for just one pizza!
And finally, the world record for the world’s largest pizza, named Ottavia for Rome’s first emperor Octavian Augustus, was set in 2012. Weighing a staggering 51,257 pounds and covering one-third of an acre, it contained 19,800 pounds of flour, 10,000 pounds of tomato sauce, 8,800 pounds of mozzarella cheese, 1,488 pounds of margarine, 551 pounds of rock salt, 220 pounds of lettuce and 55 pounds of vinegar. It took 48 hours to cook the pizza in more than 5,000 batches.

Book review: Spare Brides by Adele Parks

From the blurb:

Damaged and beautiful, they were the generation who lost so much and became ‘spare brides’. The richly compelling and emotional new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Adele Parks is the powerful story of four extraordinary women left to pick up the pieces of their lives, in the scarred, glamorous and endlessly fascinating post-First World War era.

New Year’s Eve, 1920. The Great War is over and it’s a new decade of glamorous promise. But a generation of men and women who survived the extreme trauma and tragedy will never be the same.

With countless men lost, it seems that only wealth and beauty will secure a husband from the few who returned, but lonely Beatrice has neither attribute. Ava has both, although she sees marriage as a restrictive cage after the freedom war allowed. Sarah paid the war’s ultimate price: her husband’s life. Lydia should be grateful that her own husband’s desk job kept him safe, but she sees only his cowardice.

A chance encounter for one of these women with a striking yet haunted officer changes everything. In a world altered beyond recognition, where not all scars are visible, this damaged and beautiful group must grasp any happiness they can find – whatever the cost.

Adele Parks has sent a high standard in her previous books, and this one does not disappoint. This isn’t fluffy, light ‘chicklit’; this is grown-up, thought-provoking, gritty romance.

The writing is enormously well thought out – intelligence, understanding and compassion shine through. In many ways I felt I was reading literary fiction, so well crafted are sentences, paragraphs; so well chosen adjectives and verbs.

The characters are vivid and real, and I felt empathy for each of them. I really admire the fact that none is perfect – Lydia and her ‘haunted officer’, Edgar, in particular, are flawed, to the point that at times I felt dislike for the actions and thoughts of both characters.

The story is not complex, but that allows room for careful exploration of characters’ inner worlds, so the reader really understands the narrative. It’s a well-executed plot, and I love the ending and the courage of each character in choosing the path that’s right for them.

For me, though, what really stands out about the book is its setting. Adele Parks transports the reader to post-World War I England so thoroughly that I found myself quite swept away by the poignancy of the words. In the year of the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, this is not just a diverting romance novel – this is an important book, a book everyone should read to connect to the legacy of that war: the emotional fallout for those who survived, and the social changes wreaked by the conflict.

Powerful, moving writing. Exquisite. Please do read it!

I was offered this book in exchange for a fair review via BookBridgr.

Spare Brides is available now from Amazon; click on the book cover below to visit the store.

A brief history of pasta

‘Life,’ said Italian director Federico Fellini,  ‘is a combination of magic and pasta.’

To all the countries Italians have emigrated, they have brought with them their simple, nutritious and versatile food. These days, pasta is on the menu in many countries internationally – it’s something of a staple in the Western diet in particular. No doubt you’re well familiar with pasta dishes: lasagna, bolognaise, tortellini, macaroni, tagliatelle – with some 310 specific forms of pasta to choose from, the list is long! But how much do you know about the origins of this food you likely consume often? Today I’m taking a quick look at the history of pasta.

 

Inspired by the Chinese noodle? Contrary to popular myth, Marco Polo did not introduce pasta to Italy, having discovered it on his travels in China. In fact, evidence suggests that it originated in Sicily, inspired by the influence of Arabs who invaded in the eighth century. (Macaroni, interestingly, comes from the Sicilian word for kneading dough energetically.)
Drying out. You may expect dried pasta to be a recent development, in line with mass consumerism, but in fact as early as the thirteenth century Italians were drying their pasta. It was the drying process that caused the wide uptake of this food in diets across Italy, because it meant the food was at once nutritious, easy to cook, cheap and storable for long periods of time (up to a year; ideal for sailors, hence it was taken all around the world).
Sauce, anyone? For many people, pasta and tomatoes go hand in hand – just think of the number of pasta dishes that are tomato based. But for a long time, it was very much a case of ‘never the twain shall meet’. Pasta was eaten plain, with no sauce, and with the hands. In fact, many people thought tomatoes, discovered in the New World, were poisonous, and it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that some brave soul took the plunge. The result, as they say, is history: pasta served, or cooked, in all manner of sauces. Now the upper classes, who of course preferred not to eat meals with their hands, could embrace the food too – and the fork evolved as tool for all, upper class and peasant, as a means of twisting spaghetti.
From hand to machine. In the 1600s a pasta manufacturing process was developed with the creation of  the extrusion press. In 1740, Paolo Adami, was granted the license to open the first pasta factory in Venice, and come 1867 the Buitoni Company, known to this day as a pasta brand, was formed. Such pasta makers have been variably known through Italian history as lasagnare, vermicellai and fidellai.
Spaghetti grows on trees… In 1957, pasta was growing in popularity, but it wasn’t yet the widespread foodstuff it is today in Western culture. That’s how the BBC was able to perpetuate an April Fool’s Day hoax: it ran a Panorama piece about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland depicting a family picking pasta off ‘spaghetti trees’. Many readers were entirely fooled – they even called the BBC wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti tree (supposedly, the phone operators told them to ‘place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best’!).

Today, the Italian love for pasta is such that the average person is estimated to eat more than sixty pounds of pasta each year. Duram wheat is grown in abundance for pasta, and yet demand outstrips production, and Italy has to import wheat to keep people happily stocked up on spaghetti. Pasta preparation is taken seriously – and if you want to enjoy pasta at its best, you’ll make like the Italians and follow these golden rules:

The Pasta Rules

1. Fresh is best. Forget mass-produced dried pasta – make your own!

2. Cook in salted water. Good pasta does not contain salt, so you must add it to the water while cooking.

3. Serve al dente. Pasta shouldn’t be soft, but a little firm.

4. Keep it simple.Traditional Italian pasta dishes have a few ingredients only – but make sure those ingredients are the very best you can buy.

Bajamonte Tiepolo: A riotous Venetian

Researching my novel The Echoes of Love wasn’t remotely a chore for me, it was a pleasure, especially when it came to reading up on Italian legends. Venetian history, in particular, is so colourful, with fascinating characters who really embody the infamous Italian passion.

Passion, of course, can lead to wonderful, inspirational, respected works – take, for example, the creations of the Venetians Canaletto, Tiepolo, Veronese and Palladio. But passion can also lead to less positive results. Famous Venetian Casanova, for example, for all his passion ultimately died alone and unloved. And then there was the passion of Bajamonte Tiepolo…

Tiepolo was a nobleman who lived in fourteenth century Venice. You would expect, given that he was descended from a line of Venetian Doges, that he would be all set for the Dukedom. But Tiepolo had other ideas – revolutionary ideas. He wanted to overthrow the Doge of the time and take over the city.

So, on 15 June 1310, during the Feast of Saint Vitus, Tiepolo made his move. But his plan lacked popular support, and Tiepolo and his small group of followers were confronted by the Doge’s men near St Mark’s Square. According to legend, when his standard bearer was struck dead by a stone thrown by a woman from a window above, Tiepolo turned tail and ran. Certainly, the invading force backed off – and burned down the Rialto Bridge as they did so.

But in Venice, outrunning the Doge was impossible. Tiepolo surrendered. He was banished and his palace was razed to the ground. Then, in its place, the city erected a ‘column of infamy’ on which was inscribed: This land belonged to Bajamonte and now for his iniquitous betrayal, this has been placed to frighten others, and to show these words to everyone forever.

Tiepolo’s reaction? Not to quietly live out his days in exile, it seems – that passion of his would not let him be at peace! He sent a man to break up the column. But his man was caught in the act and punished severely (he lost a hand and his eyes), and the column was repaired. Tiepolo had enough sense not to push the Venetian officials further, at least!

You may think that this Venetian’s passion had led to naught but the disfigurement of a man. But in fact Tiepolo did bring change to Venice – just not in the manner he had planned. From the thwarted Tiepolo conspiracy there grew a desire for a new form of governance for the city, and as a direct result of Tiepolo’s act the Council of Ten, which governed Venice until  1797, was formed. Tiepolo had failed in his quest to be dictator of Venice, but had unwittingly succeeded in bringing democracy, in some form, to the city.

And what of Tiepolo’s ‘column of infamy’? It was removed in the eighteenth century and passed from collector to collector, and it is now housed in storage for the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. The Venice in Peril organisation is campaigning to have the column re-erected in Sant’Agostin, where it lay originally, where it can live up to its creator’s vision that it serve as a memorial to the people of Venice ‘forever’. A memorial of the repercussions of mounting an uprising? Perhaps. A memorial of the passion of the people of Venice in fighting for their city as they see fit? Certainly.

The bridges of Venice

Venice is a city of waterways and, consequently, a city of bridges. Did you know that there are more than 400 bridges in the city, connecting the 117 islands and crossing the 150 canals?

Follow Hannah Fielding’s board Bridges of Venice on Pinterest.

These bridges are well-known for their memorable architecture:

The Bridge of Sighs: A footbridge between the Doge’s Palace and the one-time prison. See my earlier post on this bridge.
The Rialto Bridge: A wide crossing over the Grand Canal between San Marco and San Polo, first built back in 1175.
The Academy Bridge: A wooden bridge, rebuilt in 1985, that crosses the Grand Canal at the Galleria dell’Accademia.
The Calatrava Bridge: Starkly new (2008) and modern in design, this is one of four bridges that spans the Grand Canal. It’s named for its architect, Santiago Calatrava.

Other bridges are interesting for the cultural connections. Last week I wrote of the bridge wars, in which the Ponte dei Pugni (Fighting Bridge) played a prominent role. Venice also boasts:

The Ponte delle Tette (Bridge of Breasts), so named for the prostitutes of the medieval Venetian red-light district who would bare their breasts at windows on view from the bridge.
The Ponte degli Scalzi (Bridge of the Barefoot), named for the Scalzi friars, who went barefoot and whose order was situated nearby.
Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw); the straw reference most probably comes from the fact that bales of straw were unloaded here for the Doge.
Ponte dell’Inferno, Ponte del Purgatorio and Ponte del Paradiso (Bridges of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise), inspired by Dante’s Inferno.

How many bridges have I crossed when visiting Venice? Many – for they are unavoidable in any exploration of the city. But these bridges are more than physical constructions necessary to pull together a city set on so many separate islands. They are part of the emotional fabric of the city. On bridges Venetians and visitors alike stand: to take in the inspiring views, to people-watch, to daydream, to romance. Their collective beauty is sourced from more than pleasing construction. It comes each bridge’s unique history and, essentially, from its ability to unite a people as one.

Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist

I came across a mention of this book in the latest edition of Mslexia magazine, and was intrigued. Literary cocktails? Marrying the joy of literature with the pleasure of a colourful, fun tipple? Sounded like a recipe for success.

What a fun book! Just take a look at some of the literature-inspired drinks you can mix at home:

A Cocktail of Two Cities
A Farewell to Amaretto
A Rum of One’s Own
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margarita
Bridget Jones’s Daiquiri
Gin Eyre
Gone With the Wine
Gulp-iver’s Travels
Howards Blend
Love in the Time of Kahlua
One Flew Over the Cosmo’s Nest
Romeo and Julep
Rye and Prejudice
The Last of the Mojitos
The Pitcher of Dorian Grey Goose
Vermouth the Bell Tolls

Each recipe is paired with humourous notes on the novel inspirations behind the drinks. (For a sneak peek, see here.)

Virgin cocktails also feature, as do accompanying snacks such as The Deviled Egg Wears Prada and Olives ’n’ Twist. Add to these a final section on drinking games (not for the faint-hearted!) and illustrations throughout to raise a smile, and you have a wonderful book to buy as a gift – whether for a friend or yourself!

The bridge wars of Renaissance Venice

Picture the scene: You’re wandering through the Dorsoduro district of Venice on a spring evening, hand in hand with a loved one. You come to a bridge near Campo San Barnaba, and you step out on it together to the centre, where you lean on the balustrade and drink in the ambiance of the city of love.

But hold on a moment – what beautiful, romantic bridge are you upon? The Ponte dei Pugni – the Bridge of Fists. So called because it was a popular setting for the Venetian guerra di canne, a rather bizarre but hugely popular sort of organised mock fist fight of the sixteenth century.

The Venetian ‘bridge wars’ began as simple ‘stick battles’ (as reflected in the name guerra di canne). Men would come together, wearing helmets and shields, and bash at each other with wooden sticks. The idea was that the battle was mock – like children at play – but with no rules at all, invariably there were injuries, and sometimes even fatalities.

By the 1500s an added dimension to these stick battles was a prize to be fought for: possession of one of Venice’s many bridges. The battles were all the rage; they’d become a popular sort of entertainment. Much like English people would flock to watch a joust, Venetians would line the canal side to watch a battagliole sui ponti. They were arranged to be public events, on high days and holidays, sometimes attracting many thousands of spectators, who would wave their handkerchiefs in support and gamble on the outcome of the battle. The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts notes:

For one afternoon the bridge became an arrengo or arena. To make things safer, sawdust was sprinkled on the bridge stones to prevent slipping, straw padding was placed around the bridge abutments in case of falls, and the water below was cleared of rubbish or debris. Once the battle began the water below the bridge would be jam packed with barges and boats and gondolas until no water was visible.

The crowd was in effect the ultimate arbiters and determined by applause or condemning hisses which fighters and which side had acted honorably or cowardly.

The fighters were commoners, and they took their sport very seriously. They were organised into factions, forty or fifty in each, and were very loyal to their side. In each ‘mock’ battle they faced serious injury, and they did so with pride. Competition lay at the root of all they did. As a Venetian put it at the time:

“The purpose of our combat and contests is not to kill each other or tear each other apart, but only, in the presence of the city, to win and to take possession of the bridge, with competition and with the usual audacity.”

Given the public disorder and personal injury created by the bridge wars, eventually the state began opposing the events. Still the sport developed, though, evolving into a fist-only combat, which was seen as a bigger test of strength and honour. From there, large-scale brawls upon the bridges began to be replaced by mostre – one-on-one shows, increasingly with rules to govern conduct. Ultimately, by the late 1600s the spectacle of a bridge crowded with thrashing men was gone, and in its place was the sport we know today as boxing.

Back to the Ponte dei Pugni. Have I ruined the romantic bridge-top interlude with this history of violence? A little, perhaps. But this is just one of the many facets of Venetian history that make the city unique – quirky, colourful. Fist-fighting en masse may not set the mood, but oh how the passion and energy of the Venetians does!

An inspirational role model: The world’s first female doctorate

In the course of my research for my novel The Echoes of Love I researched Venetian history in detail. I was especially interested in the people of Venice – and given the city’s respected artistic and academic tradition, there are so many impressive figures to learn about. One that really captured my interest was Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the world’s first woman to attain a doctorate degree.

Elena was of noble birth; she counted among her ancestors popes, cardinals, Venetian doges and a Cypriote queen, and her family home, the castle Piscopia, had been given to the family by royalty. She was the original child prodigy, beginning her studies at the age of seven. By womanhood she was proficient in seven languages, an accomplished musician (she played the violin,  harp and harpsichord), and she was so far advanced in her studies of theology and maths that clerics and scientists of the time were travelling to Venice to meet her and engage with her in academic debates.

In today’s world progressing to university would have been the logical path for a girl such as Elena. But in fact Elena herself was not keen – she wanted to enter the Benedictine Order. Her father, however, broke the mould in deciding that his daughter must further her studies, and he applied for her to attend the University of Padua. At that time some women had studied science and maths at university, but Elena was the first to read theology.

After six years of studies, Elena made history when she received her doctorate of philosophy. So inspirational was this achievement that many influential people came to the cathedral of Padua to see her matriculate: professors of all the faculties, students, Venetian senators, and guests from the universities of Bologna, Perugia, Rome, and Naples.

Following her degree, Elena worked for the University of Padua as a lecturer in maths; sadly, she only had seven years to enjoy her position before she died of tuberculosis. She is remembered, though, in academic intuitions worldwide – Vassar College, for example, has a stained glass window depicting her matriculation in the Thompson Memorial Library:

It’s an inspirational story, I’m sure you agree, and no doubt you can tell that this is not a story of recent history. How long ago, then, would you guess Elena lived?

You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a story set in the early twentieth century… Compare, for a moment, Elena’s university, Padua, with the English University of Cambridge. Both are very old and respected educational establishments. They are, in fact, in the list of the tenth oldest universities in the world: Cambridge was formed in 1209; Padua in 1222. And yet it was not until 1921 that women students of Cambridge could receive the titles of full degrees. Yet Padua had made Elena a doctor in…  1678!

And yet the truth of the matter was not that Padua was groundbreakingly ahead of its time: it did not award another doctorate to a woman for 300 years. Clearly, it was how exceptional Elena was that made her this pioneering figure in women’s education.

Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the inconsistency in Elena’s story. She read theology at Padua, but became a doctor of philosophy. Therein lies the truth of Elena’s doctorate award. She did, in fact, earn enough credits for a doctorate in theology, but the Roman Catholic Church refused to allow her to take the title (they felt it was on a par with ordaining her as a priest). But influential figures at the university were unhappy by the Church’s decision, and hence they agreed to offer Elena an alternative PhD in philosophy.

I wonder what Elena felt when she was handed her doctorate. Did she know how important that moment was in women’s history? Was she delighted to be recognised in this way? Or was she dissatisfied that her true degree, in theology, was off limits to her?