A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Creta, Laura
CRETA, LAURA,
Was born in Italy, in 1669. She received a learned education, and was a proficient in languages and philosophy. She married Pietro Lereni, but he died in less than two years after their union. She had been much attached to her husband, and refusing several advantageous offers of marriage, devoted herself to her studies, and lived in honoured widowhood to the close of her life. She corresponded with most of the eminent scholars and philosophers then living in Europe, who were happy in forming an acquaintance, through the medium of letters, with such a lady, renowned as the most learned woman of the age. She died at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was, says a contemporary writer, "lamented throughout Christendom."