At the age of nineteen, in 1977, Peter Nissen began his undergraduate studies in theology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. After completing his secondary education at the ‘Bisschoppelijk College’ in Roermond, he first spent six months at the major seminary Rolduc in Kerkrade, followed by another six months as a postulant at the Benedictine abbey in Vaals. But the call of scholarship proved stronger than his religious vocation. Even so, the early searching of the young Peter Nissen may be seen as foreshadowing a lifelong tension between the different fields to which he would repeatedly find himself drawn: religious sensitivity, ecclesial commitment, and academic inquiry.
Peter Nissen completed his master’s degree in theology in 1984 with a thesis supervised by Eugène Honée and Jan van Laarhoven. He followed his first supervisor to the Catholic Theological University (from 1987, University) of Amsterdam (KTUA), where he was awarded a doctorate cum laude in 1988 for a study of the sometimes polemical responses of Catholic theologians to the Anabaptist movement in the Low Countries (1530–1650). From 1987 to 1990 he served as a lecturer at the University for Theology and Pastoral Studies (UTP) in Heerlen. He then moved to a lectureship at the seminary for priests and deacons at the ‘St. Janscentrum’ in ’s-Hertogenbosch, where he remained until 1994. Given the ecclesiastically polarised climate of the time, this decision came as a surprise to some, particularly as Nissen was widely recognised for his outstanding academic promise.
In 1994 he was appointed Special Professor of Culture in Brabant at the Catholic University of Brabant, a position he held for almost five years. Alongside this, he served as assistant professor and later associate professor at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, with these appointments gradually increasing in scope from 1992 onwards. On 1 February 1998, Peter Nissen was appointed full professor of the History of Christianity at the Faculty of Theology in Nijmegen. He also served as dean of the Faculty from 2003 to 2007, a turbulent period marked by unsuccessful attempts to merge the theological institutions of Nijmegen, Utrecht, and Tilburg.
In the academic year 2008–2009, he returned to what had by then become Tilburg University as Professor of the Cultural History of Christianity. Yet Nijmegen soon called him back, and from September 2009 he once again served there as a full-time professor. The successive renaming of the chairs he held guaranteed a certain dynamism to his later career until his early retirement in September 2021. These chairs were successively titled Cultural History of Religion, with special reference to the Early Modern Period (2009), Spirituality Studies (2012), and Ecumenism (2018).
Paradoxically, Peter Nissen’s eventful career reveals a number of constant and distinctive qualities about which there was never any doubt. He was a theologian and church historian of exceptional breadth and erudition, combining a keen historical sensibility with openness to contemporary concerns. By uniting scholarly precision with accessible language, he was able to reach a wide and diverse audience. Convinced that theological scholarship should continue to resonate beyond the academy, he frequently published on themes connected to historical commemorations, or offered historically informed commentary on the contexts in which religion takes shape today. This made him a much sought-after speaker and a respected commentator on religious and ecclesial affairs. He was even occasionally recognised on the street from his television appearances. While awaiting the appearance of white smoke, he could fill entire half-days with informed and meaningful reflection. In recognition of his public contribution to social and cultural debate, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion (Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw) in April 2006.
First and foremost, however, Peter Nissen was a generous and devoted teacher. He supervised no fewer than thirty-nine doctoral dissertations—thirty-four in Nijmegen, four in Tilburg, and one in Utrecht—and maintained warm and lasting relationships with his doctoral students, who held him in great affection. A further six doctoral candidates were forced to take leave of their intended supervisor before they could defend their dissertations. Peter cherished the University of Nijmegen, his discipline, and the people engaged in it. When asked, he always made time for others, including those whom many had long since overlooked.
In several respects, Peter Nissen’s professional life also mirrored his religious engagement and, at times, his inner restlessness. He delivered reflections in church services on countless occasions, particularly within Catholic faith communities. In 2010 he became a “Friend” of the Remonstrant Brotherhood and, after completing the requisite ecclesiastical examinations, served as minister in Oosterbeek from 2015 to 2019. In 2021 he returned to the Catholic Church, which he described as his emotional home. In October 2024 he made his profession as an oblate of St Willibrord’s Abbey in Doetinchem. Completing the circle, Peter dreamed of succeeding his now elderly secondary-school teacher, Pastor Chrit Willems, in the early Romanesque Church of St Dionysius in Asselt, within walking distance of his birthplace, Swalmen—not as a priest, but as a leader of prayer services: searching for the meaning of earthly realities, and fulfilled by the knowledge of origin and destiny found in God. There, he hoped, he would finally come to rest. For our heart is restless until it rests in You (inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te).
The Faculty extends its heartfelt condolences to his wife, Joyce Nissen-Janssen, their three daughters Walijne, Hadewych, and Lidewij, and to all family members, friends, and those who held Peter Nissen dear.
The funeral service will take place on Saturday, 14 February 2026, at 11.00 a.m. in the Effata Dominicus Church, Prof. Molkenboerstraat 7, 6524 VA Nijmegen.