What is the ReceptioGate Affair?
ReceptioGate Is Not an Academic Controversy
ReceptioGate is the name given to the campaign of harassment, defamation, and character assassination that followed Carla Rossi’s research into stolen and deliberately dismembered medieval manuscripts circulating on the international antiquarian market.
The affair originated in the investigation of three illuminated leaves stolen in 1979 from manuscript E.V.5 at the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino. The theft was officially reported, and photographs of the missing leaves were published by the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale in 1982. After remaining untraced for decades, the leaves resurfaced on the international manuscript market and were offered for sale by Sotheby’s in London.
On 7 July 2015, the stolen Turin leaves appeared as lots 49–51 in Sotheby’s Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts sale. The catalogue descriptions were prepared by Peter Kidd. Although the leaves retained the original foliation of manuscript E.V.5 and corresponded exactly to its three documented lacunae, the catalogue did not identify their origin in the manuscript preserved at the Turin state library.
The same Sotheby’s catalogue also included, as lots 42–44, three leaves from the Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy. The two cases were fundamentally different. The Turin leaves had been stolen from a public library in 1979. The de Roucy Hours had been sold as a substantially complete manuscript in 2009 and subsequently broken up so that its leaves could be marketed separately. It was therefore a case of modern biblioclasm, not manuscript theft.
Carla Rossi later reconstructed the de Roucy Hours digitally, identifying dispersed leaves and virtually restoring the textual, iconographic, and codicological relationships destroyed by the physical dismemberment of the manuscript. Further documentation concerning the relationship between the two cases and their presence in the same Sotheby’s catalogue is available here:
https://www.receptiogate.online/theoriginsofreceptiogate
Beginning in December 2022, Peter Kidd launched a highly publicised series of allegations concerning Rossi’s digital reconstruction of the de Roucy Hours. Public and institutional attention consequently shifted from the stolen Turin leaves catalogued by Kidd as lots 49–51 to a different manuscript that had been deliberately dismembered but not stolen.
The distinction is decisive. Allegations concerning the reconstruction of the de Roucy Hours could not answer the provenance and due-diligence questions raised by the Turin leaves. They could not alter the official documentation of the 1979 theft, the original foliation still visible on the leaves, or the material evidence connecting them to manuscript E.V.5. Nor could they explain how identifiable cultural property stolen from an Italian state library had been catalogued and offered for sale on the international antiquarian market.
As Rossi continued to publish research on biblioclasm, manuscript dismemberment, auction practices, and the circulation of detached leaves—and transmitted evidence concerning stolen cultural property to the Italian authorities—the discussion moved progressively away from the manuscripts and towards attacks on the researcher who had documented their histories.
Questions of provenance, due diligence, cultural heritage protection, manuscript theft, and the responsibilities of auction-house consultants were replaced by accusations directed against Rossi and the RECEPTIO Research Centre. The resulting campaign included defamatory publications, online harassment, anonymous communications, fabricated obituaries announcing Rossi’s suicide, threats, and repeated attempts to undermine her personal and professional credibility.
A decisive development occurred on 7 January 2026, when the Swiss Federal Administrative Court issued its judgment in the proceedings concerning the research project on the Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy. The Court annulled the decision by which the Swiss National Science Foundation had withdrawn the research grant. It found no basis for treating Rossi’s work as plagiarism from Kidd’s blog and upheld no sanction against her. The judgment thus removed the principal institutional foundation of a narrative that had dominated the public campaign for several years.
The essential question nevertheless remains:
Why did public and institutional attention concentrate on allegations against the researcher, while the stolen Turin leaves, their cataloguing and sale, the responsibilities of the market participants involved, and the possible legal implications of their commercial circulation largely disappeared from public discussion?
This website brings together primary documentation, academic publications, judicial decisions, auction catalogues, institutional correspondence, and archival evidence. These materials allow readers to examine the facts directly and reconstruct the complete chronology of the events now known as ReceptioGate.
The ReceptioGate Affair 2026: New Evidence on Peter Kidd, by Jordi Puig
🔗 https://www.kollerauktionen.ch/fr/132590-0066-1174-MAESTRO-DELLE-EFFIGI-DOMENICAN-1174_70669.html
This site presents fully documented evidence about:
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The role of Peter Kidd in promoting the dismemberment of the De Roucy Hours
🔗 https://www.oprom.eu/post/how-peter-kidd-promoted-the-destruction-of-the-de-roucy-hours-his-collaboration-with-manuscript-dis -
The fabrication of false accusations and manipulated files
🔗 https://www.oprom.eu/post/peter-kidd-excised-leaves-and-the-illusion-of-provenance-research-2025-commentary -
The use of Kidd’s blog to slander Prof. Rossi and others
🔗 https://www.oprom.eu/post/peter-kidd-a-documented-case-of-defamation-and-concealment-from-giovanni-mazzarelli-to-receptiog
🔗 https://www.isfida.eu/post/peter-kidd-a-documented-case-of-defamation-and-concealment-from-giovanni-mazzarelli-to-receptiog -
The academic and legal response
🔗 https://www.oprom.eu/post/the-receptiogate-affair-official-documents-academic-response-and-timeline-of-events
🔗 https://www.isfida.eu/post/receptiogate-official-documents-publications-and-institutional-response
🔗 https://www.receptiogate.info/press-statements
🔍 Want to know more?
📚 Full timeline and legal documents:
🔗 https://www.receptiogate.info/timeline
🔗 https://www.receptiogate.info/faq
🔗 https://www.oprom.eu/post/the-receptiogate-affair-truth-defamation-and-the-struggle-against-manuscript-dismemberment
🔗 https://www.alta-formazione.it/post/receptiogate-spiegato-diffamazione-documenti-accuse-infondate-e-risposta-accademica
🧑🎓 Background on the institutions involved:
🔗 https://www.receptiogate.info/actors-behind-the-defamation
🔗 https://www.receptiogate.info/actors-behind-the-defamation/peter-kidd-medieval-manuscripts-provenance
🔗 https://www.receptiogate.info/actors-behind-the-defamation/societ%C3%A0-internazionale-di-storia-della-miniatura
🔗 https://www.oprom.eu/post/the-responsibility-of-the-società-internazionale-di-storia-della-miniatura-in-the-receptiogate-affai
✉️ Rebuttals, testimonies, and international support:
🔗 https://oprom.substack.com/p/documented-timeline-of-the-defamation
🔗 https://oprom.substack.com/p/facing-disinformation-with-knowledge
🔗 https://oprom.substack.com/p/all-official-sources-on-receptiogate
This is not an academic controversy.
This is the exposure of a profitable network that trades in cultural destruction — and silences those who speak up.