The Secret Team of Scientists How did the priest get a hold of such a fantastic machine? According to what he told Brune, he had been working with a Father Agostino Gemelli at the Catholic University of Milan trying to filter harmonics out of Georgoian chants when they heard the voice of Gemelli’s late father speaking to them on the wire recorder they were using (Gemelli later confirmed this incident). This got the priest thinking about what happened to all the sights and sounds humans make. Did they disappear completely or do they continue to exist in some way? Ernetti approached some eminent scientists and assembled a team to work on the project. The group inclided Enrico Fermi (one of the designers of the first atomic bomb) and Wernher von Braun (the German rocket scientist). The team built the chronovisor so it could tune into any time or place. They observed not only the crucifixion of Christ, but French conqueror Napoleon, the Roman philosopher Cicero, and the play Thyestes by the Roman poet Quintus Ennius. Brune was astonished that he had not heard of the invention of this device. “Why hide such a discovery?” he asked. Father Ernetti replied that the team had decided to voluntarily dismantle the device. Since it could tune into any place at any time in the past it left no room for privacy. In the wrong hands, Ernetti said, it could create the “most fearsome dictatorship the world has ever seen.” Father Ernetti also spoke at some conferences on paranormal phenomena discussing his machine. While he never produced the device itself, he was eventually coaxed into displaying some forms of proof. The first was the text of the play Thyestes. Father Ernetti’s Proof The play Thyestes was written by Quintus Ennius who was born 239 B.C. in what is now Calabria, Italy. Ennius is sometimes called the “Father of Latin Poetry” and over the course of his lifetime he wrote about 20 plays and an epic poem on the history of Rome called Annals. Only a few fragments of his work survive. His last play Thyestes was produced only shortly before his death in 169 B.C.. Scholars have wondered about this play for centuries. Though they know what the story was about based on the writings of the first century author Seneca, the actual text, except for a few lines, has been lost to history. Sometime in the late 60’s a Professor Giuseppe Marasca became interested in the stories he was reading about Father Ernetti and his machine. Marasca contacted Ernetti and eventually they became friends. Ernetti promised to show Marasca his machine, but never did. What he did present to the professor was a handwritten manuscript of what he indicated was the complete play, Thyestes, that he had supposedly copied down while watching the chronovisor. Marasca held onto the text for a number of years, refusing to show it to anybody. Eventually he passed copies to select individuals including Father Brune. A second piece of evidence that Father Ernetti released was a picture of Christ’s face while he was on the cross, apparently photographed through the chronovisor. The photo shows the face of a bearded man with upturned eyes. It wasn’t long, however, before someone noticed that the picture was identical (except being reversed left-to-right) to one sold at the Sanctuary of Merciful Love in Collevalenza, Italy. The photograph shows a wooden carving of Jesus in the sanctuary by the Spanish artist Cullot Valera. After this revelation Father Ernetti said little more about the photograph and the chronovisor. He died in 1994. As for the manuscript of Thyestes that he said he had transcribed from watching the play on the chronovisor, it seems too short – only 120 lines – for it to be the full play. Most plays of this type would have been ten times as long. Dr. Katherine Owen Eldred of Princeton University, an expert on the play who translated the manuscript for the American edition of the book Father Ernetti’s Chronovisor, suspects that isn’t authentic. Many of the words used in this manuscript didn’t appear in the Latin language until over two centuries after the play was first performed. The type of words and the way they are repeated also suggest that the person who composed the manuscript had limited skills in Latin. As Ennius, the playwright, was using his native language this seems very strange. This makes one wonder if the author wasn’t Ennius, but Father Ernetti himself. The Enigma of Father Ernetti What can we make of this strange story? It would be easy to dismiss Father Ernetti as a crackpot or compulsive liar. Outside of his entanglement with the chronovisor, however, Father Ernetti was an extremely respected, but quiet, intellectual whose specialty was archaic music. He spent most of his life doing research and teaching on this subject and was the author of such respected books as Words, Music, Rhythm and the multi-volume work General Treatise on Gregrian Chant. Why would such a respected clergyman, academic and author make up such a wild story? After the Father’s death the editors of Father Ernetti’s Chronovisor received a document from someone claiming to be a relative of Ernetti but wishing to remain anonymous. The document tells of how this relative was called to Ernetti’s deathbed and the priest confessed that he had made up the play and falsified the picture. However, Ernetti continued to insist that the chronovisor actually worked. Since the document is anonymous it is hard to know how much faith to place in it. Father Brune, Ernetti’s long time friend, believes that the chronovisor existed, but Ernetti came under pressure from his superiors in the last years of his life not to talk about it. Brune thinks the resemblance of the picture to the statue can be explained by the artist carving the work under the direction of a nun who had a vision. In the vision she saw Christ hanging on the cross and described it to the artist. The artist translated her vision exactly into the sculpture. The sculpture and the photo look alike because they both are true representations of Christ’s face. One coming to us via the chronovisor, the other through the nun’s vision, suggested Brune. We may never be able to prove that the story of Ernetti’s chronovisor was false, but with our technical capabilities expanding continually might it be possible to someday build such a device? seeker401.wordpress/2009/09/23/the-vaticans-time-machine-the-chronovisor/
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 21:49:27 +0000
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