The Chronovisor: Did the Vatican Possess a Machine That Could See the Past?

About this episode

In May 1972, Italian journalist Vincenzo Maddaloni published an extraordinary report in La Domenica del Corriere. Benedictine priest and music scholar Pellegrino Maria Ernetti claimed that a machine could recover sights and sounds from the distant past. The alleged device later became known as the Chronovisor. Maddaloni’s article included a photograph attributed to the story and described the alleged recovery of Thyestes, a largely lost tragedy by the Roman poet Ennius. Both claims appeared to offer evidence beyond Ernetti’s own account. Yet later investigators reported that the photograph closely matched an existing crucifix image, while the purported ancient text faced serious reported philological objections. Decades later, François Brune expanded the secrecy account, saying Ernetti had described dismantling the device and placing plans beyond public reach. But in a published 2003 account of a Madrid conversation with journalist Javier Sierra, Brune acknowledged that he had never personally seen Chronovisor films or photographs. This episode follows the claim from Maddaloni’s 1972 reporting through the photograph challenge, the Thyestes inquiry, the physics question,