Deepest of all the secrets Leonardo shared with young Bona, was the story of the Holy Grail and the knowledge of Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene. When Leonardo reached his 60s and his health began to fail, he became increasingly concerned over what he should do with the Grail, which by then had been in his possession through two decades. The Milan area had for years been occupied by France, and the North Italian daily life was still strongly marked by war and strife, so Leonardo's concern was not without reason. He had got increasingly concerned that the Grail could come in wrong hands after his death.

Leonardo's plan succeeded beyond all expectation, and already in 1517 Sigismund appeared in Milan to discuss a potential marriage with Bona Sforza. It soon became clear that the arranged marriage was acceptable to all parties, and Leonardo was thereafter not slow to share his idea and concerns with the prospective marriage couple. The idea was that the Grail should be 'camouflaged' as part of a book collection that would be transported to the Grand-Duke's Palace in Vilnius after da Vinci's death.  Sigismund and Bona were married in 1518, and Leonardo died only a year later, in 1519. 

Sigismund I and Bona Sforza.

The scheme to move the Holy Grail to Vilnius went according to the plan, and the Grail was not long after incorporated as the secret key point in the library that was created in the Royal Palace. The library was based on a large amount of very valid books collected by Leonardo and Bona Sforza, all from the intellectual centres of those days in Italy and other European countries.

The royal couple then ruled successfully for many years over Lithuania and Poland from the palace in Vilnius, proudly aware that they were in possession of Christianity's top secret. When Sigismund died in 1548, widow Bona decided to share the secret with their son, Sigismund Augustus, who had succeeded his father as Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland. After the death of her husband, Bona herself moved to Masovia in east Poland. She stayed there for eight years and then moved to the city of Bari in southern Italy, where since her birth had carried the title 'Duchess of Bari'

In 1558, a year after settling in Bari, Bona Sforza was poisoned by her trusted officer, Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda. He was acting on behalf of King Philip II of Spain, who wished to avoid repaying his sizable debts to the Grand Duchess. Bona Sforza was buried in a sarcophagus in the Cathedral of Bari. Her sarcophagus stands there, still today, as a sad but strong symbol of the close ties of that time between Italy and Lithuania.

The founder of the Jesuit Order, Ignatius Loyola, sent

his leading theologians to Vilnius immediately after

having been contacted by Sigismund Augustus.

Eleven years after Bona's death, representatives of the Jesuit Religious Brothers came to Lithuania to establish their Order. The Brothers' first and main task was to plan and build an educational institution of the highest level, and to move the library where the Holy Grail was hidden, from the Royal Palace to a safer place within the new institution, controlled by the Jesuits, Christianity's leading brotherhood.

The background for this move by the Jesuits, was that Grand Duke Sigismund Augustus after the message of his mother's death reached him, had got into deep worries similar to those of Leonardo da Vinci 50 years earlier: How to best hide and protect the Holy Grail for the future?  An important element in his worries was that he was childless, and he had now to face the fact that he could be the last ruler of the world famous Jogailo Dynasty. No wonder he worried that the Grail could get into wrong hands when his reign and life came to its end.

In 1565 he had reached his conclusion; to share his big secret with the Jesuit Brotherhood that had grown to be one of the Roman Catholic Church's leading movements during the mid 1500s. An open-minded, tolerant monarch and a loyal Roman Catholic, Sigismund had during his reign peacefully sought to counteract Martin Luther's Reformation in Eastern Europe, and he concluded now that the Jesuits, who successfully preached the Counter Reformation, would be the perfect protectors of the Holy Grail after his death. The Jesuits organised their order along military lines and strongly represented the autocratic zeal of the period, characterised by careful selection, rigorous training, and iron discipline, so Sigismund was convinced they would be the right ones to protect the Grail against the Protestants or any military intruders.

It was with great force that the Brothers came to Vilnius by the end of the 1560s. They had access to large resources both from Vilnius and Rome, and had ahead of their arrival agreed with Sigismund to build an outstanding intellectual and spiritual teaching institution around the Holy Grail. The Grail was thus the beginning of the wonderful Vilnius University, which opened as a Jesuit College in 1570 and as a University in 1579.

The rush proved to have been by virtue of necessity, for Sigismund died in the summer of 1572. The Grand Duke passed away knowing that the Grail was in safe hands, though he never got to see the University completed. Sigismund Augustus died childless and thus became the last ruler of the grand Jogailo Dynasty as well as of the Italian-Lithuanian dynasty that Leonardo da Vinci and the Holy Roman Empire had planned with so much energy earlier in the century.

The death of Grand Duke Sigismund Augustus in July 1572.

The story of the Holy Grail continued unabated after Sigismund's death, with frequent communication between the Pope and the head of the Jesuit Brothers in Vilnius. And it was in a direct decree from the Pope that the chapel next to the new bell tower now was expanded to a glorious house of God and given the name Sts. Johns' Church. The name shows that the Catholic Church wanted the highest protection of the new church, the bell tower and, first of all, the Holy Grail. They therefore named and dedicated the new church, not to just one of the St. Johns, but to both John the Baptist and the Apostle John. It was the second time in Christianity's history that something like this had happened. First time was when the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano), the first among the four major basilicas of Rome was built by Constantine the Great in the 4^th century. This church is also the cathedral of the bishop of Rome, the Pope, and is thus known as Omnium urbis et orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput: "Cathedral of Rome and of the World." The Holy Grail gave the Sts. Johns' Church in Vilnius a similar glorious world value, thus the name.

In 1579, after just nine years of construction, the new university buildings were completed. And it was with great reverence the leading Jesuit Brothers that same year installed the library and within it hiding the Grail that Bona Sforza secretly had brought with her from Milan more than 50 years earlier.

And it is there, under the floor boards of the Vilnius University Library, that the Holy Grail has been safely hidden for 430 years now. The Jesuits have been extremely clever and careful not to share this tremendous secret with anybody. But now, dear readers of VilNews, also you know the truth.

Millions of people visited Louvre and the Rosslyn Chapel after Dan Brown's book was published seven years ago, and I wonder how many are going to visit Vilnius University this year, now that the truth about the Holy Grail is finally made public?

Aage Myhre

Editor

Here, under the floor boards of the Vilnius University Library, is where the Holy Grail was safely hidden

when the university opened in 1579. The Grail is located exactly beneath the centre (the top point) of

the library's CROSS ARCH, which is typical and characteristic for the Jesuit Order's Brotherhood.

PS: Please observe that the above article is pure fiction – though based on real historical facts.