NILLES, NIKOLAUS. — Jesuit, canonist, and liturgist, born at Rippweiler (Luxembourg) on 21 June 1828, died at Innsbruck on 31 January 1907.
Having entered the Order (1858) after completing his studies at the Collegio Germanico in Rome and receiving priestly ordination, he was immediately elected professor of canon law at the University of Innsbruck, where he remained almost until his death. From 1870 to 1895 he was also rector of the theological college, for which he composed the Consuetudines. A man of great activity, in addition to the numerous articles he contributed to the Zeitschr. für kathol. Theologie, he left two fundamental works that made him deserving of special merit for devotion to the Sacred Heart and for the reunion of the separated Churches of the East: De rationibus festorum sacratissimi Cordis Jesu et purissimi Cordis Mariae libri IV (2 vols., Innsbruck 1867; 5th ed. 1885) and Kalendarium manuale utriusque Ecclesiae orientalis et occidentalis (2 vols., there 1879–81; 2nd ed., 1896–97). Both works were received with acclaim, especially the second, not only by Catholics but also by Protestants (Nestle, Harnack, etc.) and by the official Russian Church, which, almost as a commentary, published a series of 48 polychrome plates for the individual saints of the year and for the feasts of the Christian mysteries: Ephemerides figuratae graeco-clavicae, Festbilder-Atlas zu Nikolai N. S. J., Ἑορτολόγιον πρόγραρον: Kalendarium manuale (Moscow 1897), sending him a complimentary copy. Also deserving mention is: Commentarius in Concilium plenarium Baltimorense tertium (2 vols., Innsbruck, 1884–91).
BIBLI: M. Blum. Das Collegium Germanicum zu Rom und dessen Zäelinge aus dem Luxemburger Land, Luxembourg 1899, pp. 94–109 with bibliography: L. Fonck, N. N., in Zeitschr. f. kathol. Theologie, 31 (1907), pp. 396–400; H. Leclercq, s. V. in DACL, IX, 1732–34. Celestino Testore