How the Società Internazionale di Storia della Miniatura Enabled Defamation in the ReceptioGate Affair
Società Internazionale di Storia della Miniatura and its president, Prof. Alessandra perriccioli Saggese
The ReceptioGate Affair has exposed not only individual misconduct, but also the institutional complicity of certain academic societies. Among them, the Società Internazionale di Storia della Miniatura (Naples) played an active and documentable role in the orchestration and dissemination of defamatory content targeting a scholar whose research has challenged the manuscript dismemberment market.
Between December 2022 and April 2023, at least four defamatory emails were circulated using the Society’s official mailing list. Yet the president of the association, Prof. Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese—despite being repeatedly informed—took no legal or disciplinary measures to contain the damage. She failed to denounce the abuse of the mailing list, did not safeguard the personal data of members as required under EU Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR), and allowed further defamatory messages to circulate using the same system.
This is not mere negligence, but a case of complicity in aggravated defamation, under both Italian and European legal frameworks. It also entails multiple data protection breaches. The repeated use of institutional infrastructure to spread false and harmful allegations shows a persistent failure of oversight and a clear abuse of academic authority.
This conduct raises serious legal concerns:
– Complicity in defamation (for knowingly facilitating repeated acts without intervening);
– Data protection violations (for the unsecured use of member contact data);
– Institutional liability (for allowing an academic infrastructure to be used for private retaliation).
The legal and ethical implications of this behaviour are documented in Jordi Puig’s investigation:
📄 Institutional Complicity in the So-Called ReceptioGate Affair: 1. The Role of the Società Internazionale di Storia della Miniatura – Napoli
https://www.academia.edu/129268162/Institutional_Complicity_in_the_So_Called_ReceptioGate_Affair_1_The_Role_of_the_Societ%C3%A0_Internazionale_di_Storia_della_Miniatura_Napoli
For a broader analysis of the affair, including source material and legal documentation:
📘 The ReceptioGate Affair: Truth, Defamation, and the Struggle Against Manuscript Dismemberment (open-access book)
https://books.google.ch/books?id=ek5ZEQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false
Academic societies have a duty to act independently, uphold scholarly ethics, and protect their members. When they instead become vehicles for private vendettas and commercial interference, their credibility collapses—and with it, the very idea of disinterested research. The Society’s long-standing entanglement with the antiquarian market is also visible on its own institutional website, where links to commercial dealers appear side by side with academic databases. As of May 2025, the Società Internazionale di Storia della Miniatura openly lists among its “recommended resources”:
– Günther Rare Books, a Swiss art dealer known for selling illuminated manuscript leaves;
– Enluminures, a French database often used to sell dispersed manuscript leaves sold on the art market.
This juxtaposition—placing scholarly catalogues next to the very dealers who benefit from manuscript dismemberment—betrays a dangerous erosion of boundaries between research and commerce. It raises urgent questions about conflicts of interest, ethical neutrality, and the Society’s alignment with actors profiting from the destruction of cultural heritage.
