Nikolaus Nilles

After completing his gymnasium studies brilliantly, he went to Rome where from 1847 to 1854, as a student of the Collegium Germanicum, he laid the foundation of his ascetic life and, as a pupil of the Gregorian University, under the guidance of distinguished scholars (Antonio Ballerini, Johann Baptist Franzelin, Carlo Passaglia, Giovanni Perrone, Francis Xavier Patrizi, Clement Schrader[citation needed] and Camillo Tarquini), prepared the way for his subsequent scholarly career.

[1] Nilles lectured throughout his life — after 1898 usually to the North American theologians, to whom he gave special instructions on canonical conditions in their country, for which task no one was better qualified than he.

For fifteen years (1860–75) he presided over the theological seminary of Innsbruck, an international institution where young men from all parts of Europe and the United States were trained for the priesthood.

[1] Nilles's Commentaria in Concilium Baltimorense tertium (1884–90) and his short essay, Tolerari potest, gained him a wide reputation.

Martin Blum enumerates in his by no means complete bibliography fifty-seven works, of which the two principal are: De rationibus festorum sacratissimi Cordis Jesu et purissimi Cordis Mariae libri quatuor (2 vols., 5th ed., Innsbruck, 1885) and Kalendarium manuale utriusque Ecclesiae orientalis et occidentalis (2 vols., 2nd ed., Innsbruck, 1896).

The title is self-explanatory; yet, though the basis of these ordinances is uniform, the details are of infinite variety, since the work treats not only of the Latin but also of the Eastern Rites.

Apart from the principal aim of the work, it offers valuable information concerning recent Eastern Catholic ecclesiastical history, also authorities and literature useful to the historian of liturgy and creeds.