Peter Kidd is not an academic. He has no university affiliation and no scholarly qualifications. His background includes temporary cataloguing work for the British Library and decades of activity as a manuscript dealer, consultant and blogger, mainly known for promoting dismembered manuscript leaves and for assisting private collectors and auction houses in identifying and marketing cut folios.

In December 2022, Kidd launched a defamatory campaign targeting Prof. Carla Rossi, founder of the Research Centre for European Philological Tradition. This followed the publication of Prof. Rossi’s article denouncing the online sale of dismembered illuminated manuscripts and her official report filed with the Italian Carabinieri Art Crimes Unit. Within days, Kidd began publishing a long series of posts containing false and damaging allegations.

These blog posts have had concrete effects:
– They led to the publication of fake obituaries of Prof. Rossi.
– They were followed by anonymous death threats.
– They encouraged defamatory emails to be circulated to her colleagues and institutions, many of which used academic mailing lists.
– They misled journalists into writing articles based on false information, some of which have since been removed.

Kidd’s behaviour not only targets an individual scholar, but also seeks to delegitimise a field of study: the investigation of manuscript dismemberment and the reconstruction of cultural heritage. His motivations are not disinterested. He has personally described and promoted several of the very leaves studied and reconstructed by Prof. Rossi, as shown in her recent volumes published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

ISFiDa affirms its full support for Prof. Rossi and calls for clear recognition of the harm caused when commercial interests attempt to silence critical scholarship through online defamation and harassment. The facts are documented and the chronology is public.