Life

Morella was born at Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 and was left motherless when very young; her first training was received from the Dominican nuns at Barcelona. At the age of four she began Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at home under competent teachers. When not yet seven years old, she wrote a Latin letter to her father who was away.

Accused of taking part in a murder, the father fled to Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

 with his daughter, then eight years old. At Lyon Juliana continued her studies, devoting nine hours daily to rhetoric, dialetics, ethics, and music. At the age of twelve she defended in public her theses in ethics and dialectics "summa cum laude". She then applied herself to physics, metaphysics and canon and civil law. Her father, who had meanwhile settled at Avignon, wanted his daughter to obtain a law doctorate. 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.

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. For 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

Lope de Vega

Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...

 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".

Works

She left a number of religious writings:

• a translation of the "Vita Spiritualis" of Vincent Ferrer
  Vincent Ferrer
  Saint Vincent Ferrer was a Valencian Dominican missionary and logician.-Early life:Vincent was the fourth child of the Anglo-Scottish nobleman William Stewart Ferrer and his Spanish wife, Constantia Miguel. Legends surround his birth...
  
  , with comments and notes to the various chapters (Lyons, 1617; Paris, 1619);
• Exercices spirituels sur l'éternité (1637);
• French translation of the Rule of St. Augustine
  Rule of St. Augustine
  The Rule of St. Augustine is a religious rule employed by a large number of orders, including the Dominicans, Servites, Mercederians, and Augustinians.-Overview:...
  
  with addition of various explanations and observations for the purpose of instruction (Avigon, 1680));
• History of the reform of the convent of St. Praxedis, with lives of some pious sisters, in manuscript;
• Latin and French poems, some printed and some in manuscript.