EVANGELO ETERNO. - An expression from Apoc. 14:6, by which Joachim of Flora meant the spiritual interpretation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which was to characterize the third age of the world, that of the Holy Spirit. But the Franciscan Spirituals (or "Joachimites"), particularly Gherardo da Borgo S. Donnino, considered the E. e. to be Joachim's three principal works—Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti, Expositio Apocalypsis, Psalterium decem Chordarum—which were supposed to replace the Gospel of Christ, which had lapsed since 1200. To this end, Gherardo published in 1254 in Paris the Introductorius in Evangelium aeternum, which unleashed the wrath of the secular professors of the Sorbonne, led by William of Saint-Amour, who denounced it to the Holy See. The Introductorius was condemned to the flames by Pope Alexander IV in 1255; John of Parma, Minister General of the Friars Minor, believed to be too lenient toward the Spiritual-Joachimites, was removed from office and succeeded by St. Bonaventure; Gherardo, persistent in his error, was thrown into prison, where he died in 1276.
The generalate of St. Bonaventure kept the factionists at bay; but the latter raised their heads again toward the end of the 13th century, with Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, Ubertino da Casale, and Angelo da Clareno, leaders of the faction of the Zolanti (Spirituals) within the Franciscan Order, which ended in the heretical deviations of the Fraticelli, condemned by John XXII.
In recent times, the E. e. has had some Dantean reflections; because G. Papini, following Cassel, Filomusi-Guelfi, and others, argued that Dante's "Veltro" (Greyhound) foreshadows the third Joachimite economy of the Holy Spirit, discovering in it a sort of cryptogram of the E. e.: Vangel. e. T. e. R. O. Following him, Merezhkovsky also considers the Veltro as an acronym for the E. e.
Wrongly, however, both Papini and Merezhkovsky appeal to the Libro delle Figure, attributed to Joachim of Flora and recently published by L. Tondelli, where the symbol of the Holy Spirit is not given by the dog, as they mistakenly believe, but by the traditional one of the dove.