Zvony Litoměřické diecéze – Lunga Radek, Rejšek Radek, Zelenka Miroslav (2025)

This book presents selected bells from the Litoměřice Diocese across the full breadth of their ecclesiastical, historical, technological and art-historical development, with an emphasis on liturgical ringing and the bell as a musical instrument in the service of the Church. It covers the most notable bellmaking monuments of the diocese, including the oldest bells, medieval examples from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Renaissance and Baroque bells, later work from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the period from 1945 to the present day. The first volume describes 238 bells from 108 churches in the Česká Lípa, Liberec, Litoměřice, Mladá Boleslav and Turnov deaneries. The publication reveals the richness of the surviving bells hidden in church towers and highlights the damage caused by wartime requisitions. It also recalls the continuing task of restoring church towers so that they may once again produce not only the solitary voice of a death knell, but the true music of bells. Bells are living witnesses to the faith of our ancestors, records of the art of bellmakers past and present, and sources of spiritual strength for all who listen to them. The contents are in Czech.