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Peter Kidd Manuscripts Provenance 2026 –
Sotheby's, and the Defamation Campaign against Carla Rossi

Peter Kidd, who worked for a limited period at the British Library in a cataloguing role, maintained a personal blog entitled Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, which has remained inactive since early 2023. Although often presented as a scholarly resource, the blog frequently promoted detached manuscript leaves and miniatures circulating on the antiquarian market.

Peter Kidd first entered the documented history of the Turin MS E.V.5 case through the Sotheby's catalogue of 7 July 2015, where he prepared the descriptions associated with three illuminated leaves that had been removed from the manuscript decades earlier. The same Sotheby's sale also included leaves from the manuscript later reconstructed by Professor Carla Rossi as the Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy.

Several years later, after Rossi began publishing research on manuscript dismemberment, manuscript provenance, and the circulation of stolen manuscript leaves, Kidd became one of the most persistent public critics of both Rossi and the research centre RECEPTIO.

The chronology is striking. The attacks did not precede the research. They followed it.

Between late 2022 and 2026, what had initially appeared to be a scholarly disagreement evolved into a much broader campaign involving blog posts, anonymous publications, social-media activity, institutional complaints, and repeated personal attacks directed against Rossi, RECEPTIO, and their collaborators.

In 2026, independent researcher Jordi Puig published a substantially expanded investigation into the affair:

The ReceptioGate Affair 2026. New Evidence on Peter Kidd, the Sotheby’s Sale of Stolen Leaves from Turin MS E.V.5, and the Defamation Campaign that Followed
Drawing upon judicial decisions, archival records, auction catalogues, correspondence, and previously unpublished evidence, the book reconstructs the chronology linking the Turin MS E.V.5 case, the Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy, Sotheby's sales, manuscript provenance research, and the events that became known as ReceptioGate.

Most importantly, Puig's investigation raises a question that remarkably few journalists have asked.

Why did Peter Kidd devote years to attacking a scholar whose research focused on manuscript dismemberment and the circulation of stolen manuscript leaves?

Why did the campaign intensify after evidence concerning stolen cultural property was submitted to the Italian authorities?

Why did so much attention focus on accusations against the researcher while so little was devoted to the manuscripts themselves?

These questions remain central to any serious attempt to understand ReceptioGate.

The historical record demonstrates that the Turin MS E.V.5 case, the reconstruction of the Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy, the circulation of stolen manuscript leaves, and the campaign directed against RECEPTIO form part of the same documented chronology. Any rigorous analysis of the affair must therefore consider these elements together rather than in isolation.

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Unlike peer-reviewed academic sites or cultural heritage blogs with stated ethical frameworks, Kidd’s blog never included any disclaimer of non-commercial purpose nor any statement of compliance with copyright and public interest exceptions. By contrast, scholarly blogs such as LaTPC (https://latpc.altervista.org/), curated by PhD Cristina Cumbo and dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage, clearly state their status as non-profit, informative projects, explicitly conforming to paragraph 1-bis of article 70 of Law no. 633 of 22 April 1941 on copyright protection. Cumbo’s work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence.

Kidd’s blog, in contrast, appears to have been used as a tool for personal commercial promotion, without any institutional or legal disclaimer. Many of its entries served to enhance the market appeal of items circulating through private collections, dealers, and auction houses. He is known to have written lot descriptions for auction catalogues, and in several cases, blog entries were used to legitimise provenance for items with disputed or incomplete histories.

A particularly notable case is that of the so-called Courtanvaux Hours, now reconstructed and renamed The Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy. Several leaves from this dismembered manuscript were promoted through Kidd’s blog and described in auction listings he contributed to. See:
👉 Isabelle Boursier’s Book of Hours (2024): https://books.google.ch/books/about/Isabelle_Boursier_s_Book_of_Hours.html?id=oxDgEAAAQBAJ

In 2022–2023, Kidd also launched a defamatory campaign targeting Prof. Carla Rossi, a scholar recognised for her work in reconstructing dismembered manuscripts and publicly denouncing the antiquarian market practices behind these dismemberments. Kidd’s false accusations and insinuations are now extensively documented.

For a complete picture of the facts, see:

• Documented Timeline of the ReceptioGate Affair
👉 https://www.receptiogate.info/timeline

• Peter Kidd: Role in the Defamation Campaign and Manuscript Market
👉 https://www.receptiogate.info/actors-behind-the-defamation/peter-kidd-medieval-manuscripts-provenance

• Official Communications Archive (ReceptioGate.info)
👉 https://www.receptiogate.info/communications

• OProM – Peter Kidd: A Documented Case of Defamation and Concealment
👉 https://www.oprom.eu/post/peter-kidd-a-documented-case-of-defamation-and-concealment-from-giovanni-mazzarelli-to-receptiog

• ISFiDA – Peter Kidd: A Documented Case of Defamation and Concealment
👉 https://www.isfida.eu/post/peter-kidd-a-documented-case-of-defamation-and-concealment-from-giovanni-mazzarelli-to-receptiog

• Biblioclasm, Market, and Ethics: Stop Calling Them Fragments
👉 https://www.isfida.eu/post/biblioclasm-market-and-ethics-stop-calling-them-fragments

• What is #ReceptioGate, really? (Medium)
👉 https://medium.com/@fondazione.receptio/what-is-receptiogate-really-a-centres-mission-a-smear-campaign-and-the-academic-response-42f7b83de683

• Zenodo DOI version of the Medium article
👉 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15301976

All the information above is verifiable through academic publications, legal submissions, and official statements. As of 2025, Medieval Manuscripts Provenance is no longer considered a neutral or scholarly resource, but a commercial blog that contributed to undermining academic integrity and the preservation of manuscript heritage.

This page is part of RECEPTIO’s commitment to academic transparency, cultural ethics, and the resistance to biblioclasm in all its forms.

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ReceptioGate – Official Sources, Articles, and Timeline

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This page collects all verified and institutional sources regarding the so-called ReceptioGate, the defamation campaign against Prof. Carla Rossi, and the broader academic debate around manuscript dismemberment, the role of provenance blogs, and the ethics of cultural heritage.

All links below refer to official publications by the Organisation pour la Protection des Manuscrits Médiévaux (OProM), ISFiDa, Receptiogate.info, Alta-Formazione, Substack, and Prof. Rossi’s personal site.

This page gathers all the official publications and institutional responses regarding the defamation campaign against Prof. Carla Rossi, known as #ReceptioGate, and the broader ethical debate on manuscript dismemberment and provenance manipulation.

Below is a full list of sources, grouped by platform.

🔹 OProM – Official Articles

🔹 ISFiDa – Institutional Contributions

🔹 Receptiogate.info – Public Dossier

🔹 Alta-Formazione – Articles

🔹 Substack – Academic and Public Reactions

🔹 Blogger Archive

👉 Please feel free to share this page as the official public index of #ReceptioGate documentation.
All sources are peer-reviewed, institutionally supported, and permanently archived.

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Further Links:

https://sites.google.com/view/receptiogate
https://sites.google.com/view/carla-rossi/home-page
 

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