Good things come to those who wait. This volume of essays was originally intended to celebrate the hundredth birthday of Majorie E. Reeves (1905–2003), one of the foremost scholars of her generation to work on the twelfth-century Abbot Joachim of Fiore, his apocalypticism and its influence during the later Middle Ages and into the modern era. With Reeves's passing, the collection turned into a memorial volume that, no doubt, would have greatly pleased her had she seen it. Indeed, taken as a whole, this book of essays demonstrates just how vital, rigorous and creative the study of medieval prophecy and apocalyptic thought remains, subjects that Reeves embraced and helped to bring from the margins into the mainstream of medieval studies.

By design, the volume is divided into three parts, following a heartfelt piece by Bernard McGinn honouring Reeves's career and academic generosity. The first offers new perspectives on Joachim's life and work, with essays by E. Randolph Daniel, Bernard McGinn, Christopher Rowland, Matthias Riedl and John V. Fleming. The second explores the influence of the abbot's ideas in various parts of Europe during the later Middle Ages, with essays by Fabio Troncarelli, Julia Eva Wannenmacher and Christopher Egger. The third part investigates Joachim's reception in the early modern period, with essays by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Sabine Schmolinsky and Anke Holdenried. Not surprisingly, given the calibre of scholars involved, the individual contributions are of superior quality, running the gambit from conceptual looks at Joachim's apocalyptic hermeneutics (for example Daniel, ‘Joachim's unnoticed pattern of history: the second Diffinitio’; Rowland's ‘Joachim of Fiore and the theology of the New Testament’) and place in twelfth-century politics (for example McGinn, ‘Joachim of Fiore and the twelfth-century papacy’; Riedl, ‘Joachim of Fiore as political thinker’) to close examinations of the Joachite manuscript tradition (for example Wannenmacher, ‘Joachim or Joachimist? The short excerpt version of the Psalterium decem chordarum in context’, or Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism and its codicological context: a list of Joachite manuscripts of English origin or provenance before 1600’).

On the one hand, this volume reveals just how much work is still being done (and remains to be done) on basic questions and historical problems associated with Joachim of Fiore, his ‘Joachite’ followers and the reception of his ideas, not to mention the overall role of apocalyptic eschatology and prophecy in premodern European politics and society. Most would seem to agree that Joachim represented one of the most important apocalyptic thinkers in the medieval Christian tradition, primarily known for his innovative and controversial vision of the third status, the future Sabbath age of the Holy Spirit on earth before the end of time. In the hands of his later adherents, such millennial visions took on subversive edge, with some predicting the end of the terrestrial Church in that imminent third age, earning Joachim a posthumous and long-lasting reputation as a heretic for his apocalyptic reading of salvation history. Given the sometimes bewildering complexity of Joachim's own texts and figural designs, however, scholars still endeavour to unpack and to explain the various components of his apocalypticism – a job that would be all the more daunting without Reeves's groundbreaking work on the subject. Likewise, historians continue to trace the influence and reception of Joachim's ideas, following the trail blazed by Reeves in her book The influence of prophecy in the Middle Ages (1969). This effort includes, of course, tracking the manuscript and early print transmission of Joachim's own works and those falsely attributed to him along with related prophetic traditions such as that of the Tiburtine Sibyl (discussed by Troncarelli) and the Sibilla Erithea Babilonica (examined by Holdenried). Joachim's popularity among the purveyors of prophecy and end-times scenarios means that the more we look for him, the more we find, requiring further investigation even to begin to answer questions and to follow up leads raised by Reeves in her foundational works on the abbot.

On the other hand, perhaps the most surprising quality of the essays in this volume lies in the ‘mundane’ feel of how they treat the abbot, his ideas and their reception. That is to say, thanks to Joachim's lingering association with heresy in the early twentieth century and the popularity of Norman Cohn's flawed classic The pursuit of the millennium (first published in 1957), one might still expect to encounter Joachim and Joachites as wild-eyed revolutionaries, seeking to overthrow the established order and usher in the earthly paradise of the third age (not to mention Joachim's questionable association with Marxist and Nazi ideas of future historical transformation). For the contributors to The influence of inspiration, however, Joachim's apocalypticism – while still innovative, engaging and at times sensational – contributed in a multitude of ways to a wide spectrum of political and social attitudes, adopted and adapted by a variety of thinkers that do not fit neatly into any one box. In this regard one might say that Reeves truly inspired her own ‘revolution’, that is, a historiographical one, encouraging her peers and subsequent generations of scholars to realise that apocalypticism and prophecy were far from fringe phenomena, but rather formed a central strand in the intellectual worlds of late medieval and early modern Europe.