About

People, credits, and terms of use

Matristics is a research project at Calvin University evaluating how large language models represent the women of the early church. Its rationale and aims are set out in the Background; this page covers who made it and how to use it.

Author

Eric Araujo is a Computer Science faculty member whose research interests include AI evaluation, knowledge representation, and the intersection of computational methods with humanities scholarship.

Contact: eric.araujo@calvin.edu

How to Cite

Araujo, Eric; Rylaarsdam, D.; Holtrop, Nathan; Hawthorne, Ian. Matristics: LLM Evaluation in Early Church History. 2026.

License

All content on this site is published under CC BY 4.0. You are free to share and adapt the materials with attribution.

Acknowledgements

Nathan Holtrop and Ian Hawthorne (McGregor Fellows, summer 2026) carried out the project’s first research phase: an extensive reading program in the primary and secondary literature, researched and fact-checked profiles of Macrina the Younger and Olympias of Constantinople, the redesign of the question bank and evaluation rubric, and the full data collection run of 210 responses across six models.

This work is supported by the McGregor Summer Research Fellowship at Calvin University.

Image Credits

Portraits on the individual figure pages:

Image	Source	License
Macrina the Younger — fresco, St Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv, 11th c.	Wikimedia Commons	Public domain
Olympias the Deaconess — Orthodox icon	Wikimedia Commons	Public domain
Sancta Olympias, from Sacra Eremus Ascetriarum, 1590–1662	Rijksmuseum	CC0

Portraits in the figures carousel are sourced from Wikimedia Commons:

Figure	Source file	License
Macrina the Younger	Macrina the Younger (cropped)	Public domain
Olympias	Olimpiada diakonissa (cropped)	Public domain
Mary Magdalene	Mary Magdalene by Konstantinos Tzanes, 17th c.	Public domain
Phoebe of Cenchreae	Saint Paul confiant la lettre à Phébée	CC BY 4.0
Perpetua & Felicitas	Menologion of Basil II	Public domain
Thecla	Saint Thecla, Lebanon, 14th c.	Public domain
Junia	Andronicus, Athanasius of Christianoupolis and Junia (cropped)	Public domain
Priscilla / Prisca	St. Aquila and St. Priscilla, His Wife (Met)	CC0
Egeria	Egeria (Fayum-style portrait)	Public domain
Melania the Elder	Melania the Elder (cropped)	Public domain
Marcella of Rome	Marcella of Rome	Public domain
Nino of Cappadocia	Saint Nino (Palekh icon)	Public domain
Monica of Thagaste	Ary Scheffer, Saint Augustine and Saint Monica	Public domain

No historical depiction of the Montanist prophetesses Maximilla & Priscilla is available; a typographic medallion is used instead.

The homepage hero image is the Fractio Panis fresco, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome (Wikimedia Commons, public domain).