Pellegrino Ernetti

Pellegrino Ernetti (16 October 1925 – 8 April 1994) was an Italian Catholic Benedictine priest, musicologist and self-described physicist. He is the central figure in the Chronovisor claim.

Background

According to the source, Ernetti specialised in Gregorian chant and archaic music and worked as a lecturer, choir director and author. He conducted laboratory research on sound. This acoustic and musical background is the only technical credential the source provides; the source does not describe any training in physics beyond the label "physicist."

The Chronovisor claim

In 1972 Ernetti claimed to have created a device — the Chronovisor — capable of observing and recording past events. He said it had been developed over several years by twelve scientists, naming three: himself, Agostino Gemelli, and Wernher von Braun. He asserted that he had used it to observe the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, to view a performance of the lost Latin tragedy Thyestes by Quintus Ennius, and to hear a speech by Cicero.

He presented a photograph he said showed Christ during the Crucifixion and a text he said reproduced the lost play. The photograph was later identified as an image of a wooden sculpture of Christ by Coullaut Valera; the text is regarded by scholars as a modern composition, likely created by Ernetti himself. The source states that Ernetti's Chronovisor claims are generally regarded as pseudoscientific.

The 1952 tape-recorder episode

Per Peter Krassa's book, on 15 September 1952 Ernetti was working with Agostino Gemelli on a frequently-breaking tape recorder. After Gemelli called out to his deceased father for help, the repaired recorder allegedly played back a voice identified as the father's, and a repeat of the procedure produced a second message using a childhood nickname known only to Gemelli and his father. The two men reportedly brought the matter to Pope Pius XII. The source characterises this as an early account of Anomalous Voice Phenomena (EVP).

Assessment

The source supplies no mechanism, no measurement and no primary documentation for any of Ernetti's claims, and the only physical exhibits were discredited. See Chronovisor Claims vs. Evidence: The Photograph, the Text and the Pseudoscience Classification.