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Abstract: HERESY AND LIBERTINISM IN LATE 18TH CENTURY ROME THE CHINARD-RATER CASE Beginning with the issue of the renowned sculptor J. Chinard, destined to become even more famous during the years of the Napoleonic Empire, and the young architect I. Rater, the two Frenchmen arrested by the Governor’s police in Rome in 1792 with the charge of heresy and revolutionary conspiracy against the State and handed over to the Holy Office, this essay analyzes the political reality of Rome in the nineties of the Seventeenth century, before the proclamation of the Republic. These are years of <<Jacobin>> plots and judiciary repression that result in a political as well as a moral and religious condemnation of the French Revolution, considered to be heretic and an offspring of Jansenism, the Enlightenment, Freemasonry, and libertine tradition. Particular attention is accorded to the places used for social gatherings and the universe of the Roman artists, particularly involved in the democratic movement, as well as the relevance of the popular idea at the time regarding symbolic and behavioral elements (clothing, lifestyle, sexuality, gesture-like expressiveness) in determining judgments, even popularly widespread, on political, moral, and religious identity of the French revolutionaries and their Roman sympathizers.