ReceptioGate is not an academic controversy.

 ReceptioGate is not an academic controversy.

It is the name now used to describe a documented campaign of harassment, defamation, and character assassination that followed research into stolen and dismembered medieval manuscripts circulating on the international art market.

The case originates from three illuminated folios removed in 1979 from manuscript E.V.5 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino. After their disappearance, the leaves entered the antiquarian market. On 7 July 2015, the three stolen folios appeared in a Sotheby's sale of medieval manuscripts. The catalogue descriptions were prepared by Peter Kidd. In the same catalogue, Kidd also described leaves originating from the dismembered Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy, a manuscript that later became the subject of extensive reconstruction research conducted by Prof. Carla Rossi.

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When Rossi began publishing studies on manuscript dismemberment, biblioclasm, and the circulation of detached leaves, and when evidence concerning stolen Italian cultural property was transmitted to the Italian authorities, the focus of public discussion unexpectedly shifted away from the manuscripts themselves.

Instead of examining the provenance of the Turin leaves, the role of auction houses, the activities of manuscript dealers, or the destruction of medieval codices for profit, a sustained campaign targeted the researcher who had documented these cases.

Accusations of plagiarism, anonymous emails, online harassment, defamatory articles, fabricated obituaries, threats, and repeated attempts to discredit both RECEPTIO and Prof. Carla Rossi gradually eclipsed the original issue.

The central question remains unchanged.

Why did public attention concentrate on attacking a scholar while the discussion of stolen manuscript leaves, manuscript dismemberment, and cultural heritage crimes disappeared almost entirely from public debate?