ReceptioGate and the (Absolute) State of Academia
- OProM
- 1 juin 2025
- 2 min de lecture
What the Public Wasn’t Told
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.
An article published in The Critic attempts to transform the documented ReceptioGate affair into a cynical media episode.The truth is that Prof. Carla Rossi’s academic work, especially on the dismemberment of Books of Hours, challenged an entire system profiting from manuscript trafficking.The backlash came not from the academy in defence of its standards, but from voices aligned with commercial and anti-scholarly interests.
This post redirects attention to verified facts, academic publications, and the institutional silence that enabled this smear campaign.
📎 Read the facts, not the spin:https://www.receptiogate.info/receptiogate-absolute-state-academia-truth
Read #ReceptioGate: Academic Defamation and the Dismemberment of Manuscripts Expanded Edition
## 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=
