Peter Kidd Medieval Manuscripts Provenance (mssprovenance): false claims and misuse of OProM identity

2 mai 2025

3 min de lecture

The term #ReceptioGate does not refer to an academic dispute.

It refers to the campaign of harassment, defamation, and character assassination that followed the public documentation of stolen and dismembered medieval manuscripts circulating on the international antiquarian market.

At the centre of the affair are three illuminated leaves removed in 1979 from manuscript E.V.5 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino. After disappearing from the manuscript, the leaves entered the manuscript trade and were offered for sale at Sotheby's London on 7 July 2015. The catalogue descriptions for the three lots were prepared by Peter Kidd.

The same Sotheby's catalogue also contained leaves from the dismembered Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy, another manuscript that later became the subject of scholarly reconstruction research.

Between 2022 and 2024, Prof. Carla Rossi transmitted documentation concerning stolen manuscript leaves and manuscript dismemberment to the Italian Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC) and publicly documented several cases involving cultural property.

Shortly afterwards, public attention shifted away from the provenance of the manuscripts and towards a sustained campaign directed against Rossi, RECEPTIO, her collaborators, and associated institutions.

The campaign included defamatory publications, anonymous communications, online harassment, fabricated obituaries, threats, and repeated allegations of academic misconduct.

On 7 January 2026, the Swiss Federal Administrative Court definitively closed the proceedings concerning The Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy, annulled the withdrawal of the related research grant, and found no basis for treating the publication as plagiarism or for imposing sanctions.

On 11 June 2023, the blog Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, managed by Peter Kidd and publicly associated with the handle mssprovenance, published a post titled "RECEPTIO Redux". In it, Kidd:

Reproduced the OProM logo without authorisation, despite the fact that the official OProM website clearly states that no reproduction of the logo is permitted without explicit written consent.
Falsely claimed that OProM's website does not disclose the names or affiliations of its members, when in fact this information has always been publicly available at:👉 https://www.oprom.eu/à-propos
Misrepresented the multilingual structure of the site, suggesting impropriety or concealment simply because Italian appears among the languages used—despite OProM being a pan-European organisation with members from multiple countries.

These statements are demonstrably false and have no scholarly or journalistic value. The purpose of the blog post appears to be purely defamatory, part of a wider pattern of targeted disinformation against Prof. Carla Rossi and affiliated academic institutions, including RECEPTIO and ISFiDA.

This behaviour is consistent with other actions taken by Peter Kidd since December 2022, when his blog Peter Kidd Manuscripts Provenance mssprovenance ceased all posts about manuscript materials and turned into a platform for defamation, insinuation and reputational sabotage.

📚 See the full timeline of defamatory activity:https://oprom.substack.com/p/documented-timeline-of-the-defamation

📄 Archived version with DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15301976

The blog “Medieval Manuscripts Provenance” continues to host defamatory and factually incorrect posts, including unauthorised use of protected logos and false statements regarding publicly accessible institutional information.

Peter Kidd Medieval Manuscripts Provenance

## Academic Publications (with ISBN and DOI)

### 1. The ReceptioGate Affair: Truth, Defamation, and the Struggle Against Manuscript Dismemberment

DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.15283264](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15283264)

### 2. Institutional Complicity in the So‑Called ReceptioGate Affair

DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.15371633](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15371633)

### 3. Excerpts from the forthcoming volume by Jordi Puig

DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.15277061](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15277061)

### 4. ReceptioGate: Academic Defamation and the Dismemberment of Manuscripts – Expanded Edition

DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.15668640](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.## Academic Publications (with DOI)

ISBN 978-2-488512-00-8 EAN 9782488512008 registered at the BnF: https://nouveautes-editeurs.bnf.fr/accueil?id_declaration=10000001179172&titre_livre=

The term #ReceptioGate does not refer to an academic dispute.

Reproduced the OProM logo without authorisation, despite the fact that the official OProM website clearly states that no reproduction of the logo is permitted without explicit written consent.

Falsely claimed that OProM's website does not disclose the names or affiliations of its members, when in fact this information has always been publicly available at:👉 https://www.oprom.eu/à-propos

Misrepresented the multilingual structure of the site, suggesting impropriety or concealment simply because Italian appears among the languages used—despite OProM being a pan-European organisation with members from multiple countries.

These statements are demonstrably false and have no scholarly or journalistic value. The purpose of the blog post appears to be purely defamatory, part of a wider pattern of targeted disinformation against Prof. Carla Rossi and affiliated academic institutions, including RECEPTIO and ISFiDA.

This behaviour is consistent with other actions taken by Peter Kidd since December 2022, when his blog Peter Kidd Manuscripts Provenance mssprovenance ceased all posts about manuscript materials and turned into a platform for defamation, insinuation and reputational sabotage.

📚 See the full timeline of defamatory activity:https://oprom.substack.com/p/documented-timeline-of-the-defamation

📄 Archived version with DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15301976