ABSTRACT
The Inquisitor Fra Tommaso Gennari felt that the success of Lucretius in Naples had progressed through stages of curiosity, enjoyment and influence, and that this 'atomists' bible' had produced devastating effect. As a matter of fact, Bortolo's name should not have been completely unknown to the Inquisitor, Fra Paolo Manueli. In the mid-eighteenth century Ferrante Pallavicino was found as an influence alongside Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle in shaping and supplying codes of expression to the hatter Bortolo Zorzi and his 'free metaphysicians'. On 10 January 1741 a list of the books found in the hatters house was read out, which must have effectively only detailed the books deemed to be dangerous. It might have been a new list, even though one must have already been drawn up on the occasion of the trial that Zorzi and Girolamo Rottini were subjected to by the Inquisitors of State during 1739.
