ReceptioGate: Harvard publishes Carla Rossi’s article exposing the truth behind the smear campaign
- Jun 14, 2025
- 2 min read
ReceptioGate is not fundamentally a plagiarism controversy. It is a case of transnational criminal activity linked to the illicit circulation of cultural property, in which allegations of plagiarism served as a powerful distraction from the underlying issues. At its core lies a well-established system operating across three interconnected levels.
1. The Original Crime: Dismemberment and Laundering
At the heart of the affair are genuine historical artefacts, including the leaves stolen in 1979 from Turin manuscript E.V.5 and the leaf removed from the Antiphonary of Castelfiorentino.
These manuscripts were deliberately mutilated, causing irreversible damage to cultural heritage. Before such material could circulate openly on the international market, its origins required a process of legitimisation.
That process relied upon auction-catalogue descriptions and scholarly assessments that omitted crucial provenance information. Through such omissions, catalogues and expert reports helped transform cultural objects of questionable origin into apparently legitimate commodities.
Prof. Carla Rossi publishes in the Harvard Art Law Review: a legal and ethical case against manuscript dismemberment
The Harvard Art Law Review (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2025) has just published a new peer-reviewed article by Prof. Carla Rossi, director of ISFiDA, internationally known for her philological research and commitment to manuscript heritage protection.
ARCHIVED HERE: https://web.archive.org/web/20251008023752/https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/halo/files/2025/07/Vol.-1-Harvard-Law-Art-Review.pdf
📘 Biblioclasm for Profit: The Legal Implications of Dismembering Western Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts explores the destruction of Western medieval books through the lens of cultural heritage law, ethics, and academic responsibility. This scholarly contribution builds upon Prof. Rossi’s official complaint to the Italian Carabinieri TPC, exposing networks and mechanisms behind the trafficking of dismembered codices.
In recent years, Prof. Rossi has been the target of defamatory online attacks linked to individuals active in the manuscript trade. This publication is both a legal analysis and an act of academic self-defence, reaffirming the integrity of her work and her thirty-year record of scholarship.
📄 Full article (open access):👉 https://www.academia.edu/129907470/Biblioclasm_for_Profit_The_Legal_Implications_of_Dismembering_Western_Medieval_Illuminated_Manuscripts
