So many people came to watch a woman earn a doctorate that the exam moved into the cathedral

It wasn't the degree she had asked for. In 1677 she applied for a doctorate in theology, and the college was inclined to grant it. But Gregorio Barbarigo, Bishop of Padua and chancellor of the university, refused outright: making a woman a doctor, he argued, was "an absurdity" that would make them "ridiculous to the whole world". Only after much insistence, and with her teacher, the professor Carlo Rinaldini, mediating, was she allowed a degree in philosophy instead.

She drew two theses of Aristotle by lot. In an essay for a University of Padua book, Pietro Greco writes that the examiners wanted to confer the degree on the spot, skipping their private deliberation, but she insisted on the usual procedure and stepped out. A few minutes later they called her back. Rinaldini set a laurel wreath on her head, handed her the books, slipped on the ring and draped a fur mantle over her shoulders.

The gap she opened closed at once: the next woman to graduate in Italy was Laura Bassi, in 1732. For Elena herself, the university writes, learning was never a way to assert women's dignity or their right to compete with men. She lived by the Benedictine rule, though outside a convent. In 1773 Caterina Dolfin gave the university a statue of her, and it now stands at the foot of the Cornaro staircase in the old courtyard of Palazzo del Bo.