ETERNAL GOSPEL. - An expression from Rev 14:6, by which Joachim of Fiore intended the spiritual interpretation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which was to characterize the third age of the world, that of the Holy Spirit. The French Joachimite Franciscans, particularly Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, considered the three principal works of Joachim—*Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti*, *Expositio Apocalypsis*, and *Psalterium Decem Chordarum*—as the Eternal Gospel, which were to supersede the Gospel of Christ, which had allegedly declined since the year 1200. To this end, Gerard published in Paris in 1254 the *Introduction to the Eternal Gospel*, which provoked the anger of the secular professors of the Sorbonne, led by William of Saint-Amour, who denounced him to the Holy See. The *Introduction* was condemned to the flames by Pope Alexander IV in 1255; John of Parma, Minister General of the Friars Minor, deemed too sympathetic to the Spiritual Joachimites, was deposed from office and succeeded by St. Bonaventure; Gerard, obstinate in his error, was imprisoned and died there in 1276.
The generalship of St. Bonaventure kept the faction in check; but toward the end of the 13th century, they raised their heads again with Peter John Olivi, Ubertino of Casale, and Angelo da Clareno, leaders of the faction of the zealots within the Franciscan Order, which ended in the heretical deviations of the Fraticelli, condemned by John XXIII.
In recent times, the Eternal Gospel has had some Dantesque echoes; for G. Papini, following Cassel, Filomusi-Guelfi, and others, argued that Dante’s *veltro* (hound) conceals the third Joachite economy of the Holy Spirit, discovering in it a kind of cryptogram of the Eternal Gospel: V. AGNELLO, *L’Etro*. Following him, even Merezhkovsky regards the *veltro* as a cipher for the Eternal Gospel.
However, both Papini and Merezhkovsky wrongly appeal to the *Liber Figurarum*, attributed to Joachim of Fiore and recently published by L. Tondelli, where the symbol of the Holy Spirit is not the dog, as they mistakenly believe, but the traditional dove.
