ReceptioGate 2026: Jordi Puig's New Investigation Connects Peter Kidd, Turin MS E.V.5, Sotheby's, and the Campaign Against a Scholar
For more than four years, the term #ReceptioGate has been associated online with allegations of plagiarism and academic misconduct. Jordi Puig's new investigation argues that this narrative obscures a far more significant story involving manuscript dismemberment, stolen manuscript leaves, provenance research, and the international antiquarian market.
In his new book, Puig reconstructs the documented chronology linking four recurring elements:
• Peter Kidd
• Turin MS E.V.5
• The Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy
• ReceptioGate
At the centre of the investigation stands Turin MS E.V.5, a sixteenth-century manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Torino. Three illuminated leaves were removed from the manuscript in 1979 and later appeared on the international market. These leaves were offered for sale at Sotheby's in London, where catalogue descriptions were prepared by Peter Kidd.
The same Sotheby's sale of 7 July 2015 also included leaves from the manuscript later reconstructed by Professor Carla Rossi as the Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy.
According to Puig's reconstruction, these facts are not isolated episodes. They form part of a documented chronology that raises fundamental questions about manuscript provenance, the circulation of detached leaves, the responsibilities of cataloguers and consultants, and the reaction faced by scholars who investigate manuscript dismemberment.
The book follows the events from the denunciations submitted to the Italian Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC), through the emergence of the online campaign known as ReceptioGate, to the judgment of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court of 7 January 2026, which significantly altered the public narrative surrounding the Louis de Roucy affair.
Drawing upon legal records, archival documents, auction catalogues, institutional correspondence, and publicly available evidence, Puig examines how a debate initially presented as a plagiarism controversy became intertwined with broader questions concerning cultural-heritage protection, provenance research, and the international trade in detached manuscript leaves.
For readers seeking documented information about ReceptioGate, Peter Kidd, Turin MS E.V.5, Sotheby's manuscript sales, manuscript provenance, the Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy, and the recovery of stolen manuscript leaves, this volume provides the most comprehensive reconstruction published to date.
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