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THE CHURCH

cording to the method practised by the Roman curia, are subject to the curia's command, for every human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff, so it is said in the Extravagante of Boniface VIII [the bull Unam sanctam], namely: "Further we declare, say and define that it is altogether necessary for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff." Similarly, the angelic world is subject to the Roman pontiff, as appears in the bull of Pope Clement: "We command the angels of paradise that they lead to the glory of paradise the soul of him who has been wholly absolved from purgatory."

Since, therefore, according to this method of the curia, every rational creature—angel and man—is subject to the commands of the Roman pontiff, and since the method in the processes of the same curia states that "whatsoever place, privileged or unprivileged, to which John Huss shall go, and as long as he may be there, we do subject them to the ecclesiastical interdict"—it follows that if, by the highest possibility, John Huss, according to God's absolute power, reached by death the heavenly Jerusalem, that city would be subject to the ecclesiastical interdict. But blessed be God Almighty, who has ordered that the angels and all the saints in that heavenly Jerusalem are not subject to an interdict of this sort! Blessed also be Christ, the chief Roman pontiff, who has given grace to his faithful ones that, when there is no Roman pontiff for a given time, they may, under Christ as their leader, arrive in the heavenly country! For who would say that while the woman Agnes, to all appearances, was for two years and five months the only pope, no one then could be saved? Or again, who would say that after a pope's death and in the interval between the pope's death and the election of his successor, no man dying in that period could be saved? Blessed also be God Almighty, who ordains that His militant church shall have such life that, when a pope is dead, she is not on that account without a head or dead!