Background
Morella was born at Barcelona and was left motherless when very young. Her first training was received from the Dominican nuns at Barcelona. When not yet seven years old, she wrote a Latin letter to her father who was away.
Morella was born at Barcelona and was left motherless when very young. Her first training was received from the Dominican nuns at Barcelona. When not yet seven years old, she wrote a Latin letter to her father who was away.
At the age of four she began Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at home under competent teachers. At Lyon Juliana continued her studies, devoting nine hours daily to rhetoric, dialetics, ethics, and music She then applied herself to physics, metaphysics and canon and civil law.
This was gained in 1608, when she publicly maintained her law theses at the papal palace of the vice-legate before a distinguished audience, among whom was the Princesse de Condé.
Morell was the first woman to receive a university degree. The first woman to receive a doctorate degree in the modern era was Stefania Wolicka, from the University of Zurich in 1875.
Disregarding wealth and an advantageous offer of marriage, she entered during the same year the convent of Sainte-Praxède at Avignon. In 1609 she received the habit of the order, and on 20 June 1610 took the vows.
On three occasions she was named prioress.
Foreign two years before her end she was in great bodily suffering and her death agony lasted five days. In a laudatory poem Lope de Vega speaks of her "as the fourth of the Graces and the tenth Muse" and says "that she was an angel who publicly taught all the sciences from the professorial chairs and in schools".
At the age of twelve she defended in public her theses in ethics and dialectics "summa cum laude".