BETHLEHEM - The Rev. Mother Jerome von Nagel Mussayassul, a poet, scholar and local historian, died Tuesday at the Abbey of Regina Laudis. She was 98.

Mother Jerome, a consecrated nun who lived at the abbey on Flanders Road for 49 years, wrote book reviews, poetry and translations.

She gave shelter to Russian refuges and concentration camp survivors and used her eight languages to assist in displaced-persons camps after World War II.

She compiled the most extensive record of early Bethlehem families, a 12-cassette oral history with a multitude of accompanying note cards.

"She was just interested in everything and passionate about everything and very brilliant," said Sister Angele Arbib, who knew her for more than a decade. "She just generated a tremendous amount of energy."

Mother Jerome was born Melanie "Muska" von Nagel in 1908 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. She spent her early childhood in Munich and the surrounding Bavarian countryside.

She lived in Florence for several years and in 1944 married the Munich portrait painter Halil-beg Mussayassul, a Muslem émigré from North Caucasia.

After the war, the couple moved to New York, where she pursued her writing under the pen name Muska Nagel.

But when she was widowed at age 50, she felt something was missing.

She entered monastic life in March 1957, after a visit to the Abbey of Regina Laudis, an enclosed contemplative community of Benedictine nuns.

She received the religious name "Jerome" after the saint who devoted his life to scholarship, teaching, writing and translating - and for the rest of her life, she did the same.

"She lived according to the order of monastic life until age really prevented that," Sister Angele said.

"She was absolutely and completely mentally and intellectually alert until three hours before she died."

Mother Jerome worked in the kitchen, and dyed wool from Abbey sheep with plants from Abbey land, and weaved items for liturgical purposes and the Abbey gift Monastic Art shop.

She made perfumes and bath oils, vinegars and mustards, and created teas out of herbs, all sold at the Abbey shop.

She continued writing and publishing until her death. In her later years, she read, wrote her memoirs, worked on the history of Bethlehem and did crossword puzzles, Sister Angele said.

She shared her work twice each year at the Bethlehem Library Literary Coffee House.

"She'd keep coming. Sometimes she didn't read her own work, somebody else would read it for her," said Dot Adamson of Bethlehem, who organized the event.

"She was a lovely woman."

She also worked with the land records of Bethlehem and neighboring towns, and was involved in the Sharon Book Club.

"She was a very dedicated human being, about people and life," said Doris Nicholls, former head of the Old Bethlem Historical Society, whom she worked with on the oral history project. "She was a very giving human being and very intelligent."

And throughout her last days, dozens came to her bed - from Germany and her husband's country Dagestan - seeking her inspiration, hope, wisdom, humor, faith and unquenchable thirst for life, Sister Angele said.

"She really believed that the mission of all life was helping in the world," Sister Angele said.

"She lived that way. She was just incredible."