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HOW IT ENDED UP

Despite the scale of the attack, the campaign ultimately collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.

What had been presented for years as an "academic controversy" was gradually revealed to be something very different: a campaign of personal and professional destruction directed against a scholar who had documented the circulation of leaves removed from stolen and dismembered manuscripts.

The chronology proved decisive.

Prof. Carla Rossi's reports concerning manuscript dismemberment, detached manuscript leaves, and cultural heritage crime came first.

The attacks came afterwards.

As new documentation emerged, it became increasingly clear that the individuals most actively involved in the campaign were not neutral observers. Two of its central figures were directly connected to the commercial history of manuscript leaves that had become the subject of provenance investigations and reports submitted to the Italian Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC).

Peter Kidd had prepared the Sotheby's catalogue descriptions for the three illuminated leaves removed from manuscript E.V.5 of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Torino.

Gaudenz Freuler had issued the expert opinion accompanying the circulation of a leaf removed from the Antiphonary D of Castelfiorentino.

Both cases later resulted in recovery actions involving the Italian Carabinieri TPC.

These facts fundamentally altered the interpretation of the affair.

The question was no longer whether Prof. Rossi's research was controversial.

The question became why a coordinated campaign of defamation began immediately after reports concerning these cases had been submitted to the authorities and publicly discussed.

Legal proceedings, documentary evidence, independent analyses, and sustained academic work progressively dismantled the false narratives that had circulated online.

The blog that initiated the campaign has largely fallen silent.

The documentation has not.

By decision of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court dated 7 January 2026, the proceedings concerning The Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy were definitively concluded.

The Court annulled the withdrawal of the Swiss National Science Foundation grant connected with the project and found no basis for treating the work as plagiarised or for imposing sanctions upon its author.

The judgment significantly weakened a narrative that had relied for years upon blog posts, social-media campaigns, manipulated documentation, and unsupported allegations.

Meanwhile, the scholar targeted by the campaign continued to publish, research, and document cases of manuscript dismemberment and cultural heritage crime, including studies published by major academic publishers and the Harvard Art Law Review.

ReceptioGate did not end because the attacks stopped.

It ended because the evidence survived.

The documentation remained.

The chronology remained.

And the facts became impossible to ignore.

📘 The full story is told in Jordi Puig's book:

ReceptioGate: Academic Defamation and the Dismemberment of Manuscripts – Expanded Edition (2024)

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Jordi_Puig_ReceptioGate?id=-iNiEQAAQBAJ

🎥 Video overview:

ReceptioGate: From Stolen Manuscript Leaves to Character Assassination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDuQiuG0IQE

📚 A second volume is currently in preparation.

It will further document the chronology of the affair, the role played by individuals connected to the manuscript trade, the institutional failures that allowed the campaign to spread, and the evidence that ultimately exposed the mechanisms behind one of the most unusual defamation campaigns ever directed against a scholar working in the field of cultural heritage protection.

 

Related Academic and Institutional Sources

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