June 1 - Justin of Nablus or Justin of Neapolis, born in Flavia Neapolis (now Nablus in the West Bank) around the beginning of the 2nd century and died (executed) in Rome around 165, is a Christian apologist and philosopher. Of free birth, he was probably a Roman citizen and his family was polytheistic.

Without ever explicitly mentioning it, he assimilated himself to the Hellenic culture whose philosophy he studied and believed in the deities. After receiving a predominantly literary education, classical at the time, he followed a higher level philosophical education that enabled him "to dialogue effectively with the intellectual elite of his time".

In particular, he studied philosophy with several professors. In the Dialogue with Tryphon, he evokes the meanders of his path and "the weaknesses of his teachers: the sufficiency of the Stoic, the harshness of the peripatetic, the encyclopaedic pretensions of the Pythagorean". Finally, he meets a most eminent Platonist with whom he thinks he "immediately accesses the vision of God, because this is the goal of Plato's philosophy". It was at the end of this eclectic journey - quite usual at the time - and impressed by the courage of Christians in the face of death that he came to Christianity. This conversion seems to have taken place before or at the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135), in Palestine or in the Roman province of Asia. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, it was at Ephesus that he was converted around the year 150 and where he had the controversy from which he drew the Dialogue with Tryphon. It has been hypothesized that the rabbi with whom he would have had this controversy was Rabbi Tarfon. After his conversion, he did not renounce philosophy but sought, on the contrary, to prove that Greek philosophers had led him to Christ.

Preaching the word of God and fighting in his works for the defence of the faith, Justin travelled a lot before settling in Rome during his second visit to that city, where he opened a school of philosophy and taught the doctrine of the Christians, always insisting on its rational foundations. This rather new approach aroused many controversies with his colleagues as well as with philosophers, notably Crescence the Cynic with whom Justin had public controversies and who reportedly denounced him to the authorities for spreading deviant doctrines. It is also possible that Justin contravened the "ungodly ordinances on idolatry" which required subjects of the empire to sacrifice to the gods. In any case, he is indicted before the authorities.

In Rome, it was the prefect of the city who was responsible both for the application of the law and the maintenance of order, and it was the Stoic philosopher Junius Rusticus, master and friend of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who held this office. According to tradition, Justin suffered martyrdom - whipping and beheading - with six of his companions around 165.