even though he was never a member of any Catholic order or diocese. Whether he was actually ordained as a priest is disputed. According to some sources, Summers had transferred from the seminary in Wornesh to the Diocese of Nottingham, but the local bishop refused to ordain him after receiving incriminating reports of Summers' prior conduct. Other sources claim that Summers travelled to Continental Europe and was ordained there by Cardinal Mercier in Belgium or by Archbishop Guido Maria Conforti in Italy. According to yet another version of events, Summers was ordained as a priest by Ulric Vernon Herford, the self-styled "Bishop of Mercia" and one of several episcopi vagantes ("wandering bishops") operating in Britain at the time. Summers' interest in Satanism appears to have derived in part from his reading of the works of the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, particularly the novel Là-bas (1891), which includes an account of a Black Mass. Summers himself later claimed in private conversation to have attended Black Masses in Bruges, Brighton, and London. There are also testimonies from former associates, including the poet J. Redwood Anderson, suggesting that Summers may even have conducted such ceremonies himself. Literary scholarship From 1911 to 1926 Summers found employment as an English and Latin teacher at several schools, including Brockley County School in south-east London. With the encouragement of Arthur Henry Bullen of the Shakespeare Head Press, Summers successfully established himself as a scholarly authority on the theatre of the Stuart Restoration. Summers successively edited the plays of Aphra Behn, William Congreve, William Wycherley, Thomas Otway, Thomas Shadwell, and John Dryden. He also helped to create a new society called "The Phoenix" that performed those neglected works. Summers' work on Restoration drama earned him election as fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1916. Several decades after his death, Robert D. Hume characterized Montague Summers' scholarship on Restoration drama as pioneering and useful, but also marred by sloppiness, eccentricity, uncritical deference to Sir Edmund Gosse and other similar gentlemen-amateurs, and even occasional dishonesty. Hume judged Summers' studies on The Restoration Theatre (1934) and The Playhouse of Pepys (1935) to be particularly fruitful sources. In his own day, Summers' credibility among university-affiliated scholars was adversely impacted by the acrimonious disputes in which he engaged with others working in the same field. The other major focus of Summers' literary scholarship was Gothic fiction. He edited three collections of