Saint Just of Penwith

Saint Just of Penwith is an early saint of the old British church in Cornwall, commemorated on 13 July and honored as the patron of the parish and town of St Just in Penwith, in the far west of the county. Almost nothing of his life is preserved, and his identity is not securely known.

Several theories have been proposed for who Saint Just was, none of them established. He has been identified by some with Archbishop Justus of Canterbury, though this is regarded as unlikely given Cornwall's long resistance to the authority of Canterbury and Rome. Another suggestion connects him with the sixth- or seventh-century Saint Iestyn (whose name corresponds to the Latin Justinus), said to have been a son of Geraint ab Erbin, a ruler of Dumnonia. A third tradition, recorded when William of Worcester visited in 1478, held that the parish church contained the bones of Justus of Trieste.