church—tenet et credit fideliter sicut Romana ecclesia et non aliter—the pope being the head of the Roman church and the college of cardinals its body. Of all names, so the doctors confessed, the name heretic is the most to be abhorred. As for the sentences pronounced by Rome upon Huss, it was not within the province of the clergy of Prague to sit in judgment upon them—nec est cleri in Praga judicare si justa vel injusta est M. J. Hus excommunicatio et aggravatio a curia romana.
These and other positions of the eight doctors the Treatise on the Church takes up one by one and discusses. Huss’s work called forth replies from Palecz and Stanislaus of Znaim, two of the signers of the document, and to each Huss made a rejoinder as he also wrote a more elaborate and very vigorous rejoinder addressed to the eight doctors as a body.[1] In the first two of these rejoinders Huss cites his Treatise on the Church by name at least eleven times, and in the Reply to the Eight Doctors at least five times.[2] The Treatise on the Church grows in interest as it is read in connection with these three cognate works, which further elucidate some of its principles and add items of personal interest.
Intended as a reply to the document issued by the eight theological doctors, this treatise became Huss's apologia pro sua vita, the defense of the views which he had drawn from Wyclif and advocated. With Cajetan before Luther at Augsburg, the eight doctors knew of only one word applicable to Huss, the word recant. His case was not arguable. Unquestioning submission was imperative. Rome had spoken: "Yield and obey," they wrote—obediendum et pariendum est.[3] Huss's final reply was not recorded with pen or ex-pressed by word of mouth. He sealed his convictions with his life at Constance.
