Was really Maria Montessori the first woman to become a doctor in Italy?
“Maria Montessori, the first woman to become a doctor in Italy, was…”
Does this sentence sound familiar to you?
If the answer is a solid “Yes” it’s because almost the entirety of the news pieces published in the newspapers and magazines over the last 60 plus years regarding Dr. Maria Montessori start with this sentence (or with a slight variation of its phrasing.)
Maria Montessori, born in Chiaravalle (AN) in 1870, was indeed a doctor in medicine, getting her degree at the University of Rome in 1896, aged 26. But, to the shock of many, she wasn’t the first one to achieve this milestone in the Bel Paese, in fact she isn’t even on the podium.
The figure of Maria Montessori is surrounded with myths and legends, but this one might be the oldest of them all and one that seems quite difficult to eradicate all over the World, Italy included. In fact one of the first encounters we have with this particular news is in the official letters that many influent educators from all over the World sent to the Nobel Peace prize committee in 1949.
Not all of the letters mentioned this, but many stated undoubtedly that one of the reason of her nomination relies on the fact that she was the first one to get such a degree in Italy, hence she was able to create her educational method on scientific basis, helping many children in the process, specially during the two World wars. The force and security with which those statements were made, suggest that this was already considered a given fact by many in Italy and beyond, so the myth of “Montessori the first female physician in Italy” was already existing in 1949 and it probably has for quite some time at that point.
It is particularly difficult to figure out when and where it started, but a simple Google search can tell us that the myth isn’t true. Just by searching for “first graduated women in Italy” we see the name of a certain noble Venetian woman called Elena Lucrezia Cornaro. Mrs. Cornaro seems to be not only the first one to get a University degree in Italy but in the World (although this is quite disputed) officially getting her diploma in philosophy from the University of Padua in 1678.
That’s an impressive record, but it is disputed because a few women might have arrived to the finish line before her, one of them is a certain Costanza Calenda. Mrs Calenda was the daughter of Salvatore Calenda, Neapolitan personal physician and surgeon of Queen Giovanna the 2nd working in Naples at her court from 1414 to 1435. It is during this time that his daughter Costanza, who helped him in his medical duties, might have become a doctor herself at the University of Naples, supposedly in 1422. Unfortunately every proof of this got destroyed during the second World War and it’s impossible to certify that record. If true she might have been the first woman in all of the Western World to achieve that accomplishment.
So, if it’s not Elena Lucrezia Cornaro nor Costanza Calenda, who is the first Italian woman to get such a distinction?
This particular accolade goes to a relatively unknown jewish woman from Florence: Ernestina Paper. She was the first one to get this degree in the unitarian Italy (post-1870) being graduated at the University of Florence in 1877. At that time Maria Montessori was just a seven year-old child, so she couldn’t be the first one.
In an article written by Carmela Covato in the magazine for educators “Scuola e Città” (issue n°8, 31st of August 1986) it is said that Ernestina Paper advertised her medical office in the local papers of Florence in 1878, taking care of mainly jewish women and children.
In the same year another woman got her medical degree, this time at the University of Turin, her name was Maria Velleda Farné; she will become the official doctor of the Queen Margherita of Savoia.
The third one should be Giuseppina Cattani who graduated in medicine in 1884 at the University of Bologna. She went on to work mainly as a researcher for said University.
At the moment our dear Maria Montessori sits at number eight in this particular list, but many other women are being discovered with many different degrees and it’s really possible that she’d be kicked out of the top 10 very soon.
Analyzing the data we also discover that when she got her degree, in 1896, Italy was in the middle of a booming period for women studies: from 1877 to 1880 only three women got any kind of University degree; from 1881 to 1884 eight; the following three years there were nine; then 18 from 1889 to 1892; 19 from 1893 to 1896 (Maria Montessori’s group) and a staggering 149 women got their University degree from 1897 to 1900.
This goes to show that Maria Montessori wasn’t an anomaly, she was a part of a trend.
We might never know who started the myth or when and why it started, but we know for sure that calling her “the first one” is deadly wrong.
Francesco Mandolini
