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Matristics

An open benchmark · women of the early church

How well do AI models know the women who shaped Christianity?

Six models, 35 questions on Macrina and Olympias, scored by two annotators on accuracy, coverage, framing and epistemic care.

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6
models
35
questions
420
ratings
2 / 14
figures scored

Leaderboard

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Overall mean on a 1 to 5 scale. Bars start at 4.0 so the differences are visible.

What we found

The numbers in full →
4.46

Models know the facts better than the limits of the evidence

Mean per rubric dimension, all models.

10 vs 4

False premises split the field

Filled: the model corrected a planted false premise (10 ratings each).

5 of 6

Models score lower on Olympias, the better-documented figure

MacrinaOlympiasaxis 4.4 to 4.9

The figures

All 14 figures →
Icon of Macrina the Younger Macrina the Youngerc. 327–379 · 18 questions · mean 4.69 Icon of Olympias the Deaconess Olympias of Constantinoplec. 360–408 · 17 questions · mean 4.60
12 figures in preparation Mary Magdalene · Phoebe · Perpetua & Felicitas · Thecla · Junia · Priscilla · Egeria · Melania · Marcella · Maximilla & Priscilla · Nino · Monica
Read the full reportBackground, method, results, agreement and caveats, online or as a PDF Open →

Cite as: Araújo, E.; Rylaarsdam, D.; Holtrop, N.; Hawthorne, I. Matristics: LLM Evaluation in Early Church History. 2026. ericaraujo.com/matristics

Matristics · Eric Araújo, Calvin University · CC-BY-4.0

 
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