The church in Bílovice has new stained glass windows based on a design that is at least 60 years old

Bílovice nad Svitavou – The parish church of St. Cyril and Methodius in Bílovice nad Svitavou has acquired new stained glass windows. The current pastor, Pavel Lazárek, succeeded in materializing a cubist design by the local painter Bohumír Matal, which dates either from shortly after World War II or from the 1960s. According to Lazárek, the church has gained a new atmosphere that is slightly different in every daylight and in the night shines light through the stained glass outward thanks to illumination, he told ČTK. The new stained glass windows were blessed by Brno dean Václav Slouk.

The stained glass will also be the first publicly accessible work by Matal in Bílovice, where he lived. For this reason, the village collaborated on the production and installation. The manufacturer was a local workshop of the Dohnal family. "The mother and son refined the design,” said Lazárek.

The current pastor arrived in Bílovice in 2016, and at that time, the parishioners introduced him to Matal's design. He liked it, and thus set to work to ensure that after many decades, the church built in 1913 could finally have stained glass windows. "We had to negotiate with preservationists and the liturgical diocesan commission. The church also did not have frames, due to a lack of money after the war, so we had to have frames made, new windows, and then the stained glass. We waited a long time for glass from France and Germany, because Matal played with pastel colors, and it is not easy to obtain glass in ten different shades of yellow,” Lazárek said. The stained glass is placed on window casement wings so that they can be cleaned from time to time. The entire work, including the frames, windows, and stained glass, cost over half a million crowns.

Matal's design remained unnoticed and unfulfilled for a long time. "There are two variants regarding its dating. One speaks of the year 1946. The other refers to the 1960s, when, according to the testimony of the then school principal, the pastor came to boast about the stained glass design at the school. For various reasons, which we can only speculate about today, the design was not realized and was archived. And it remained there until the reconstruction of the church interior in 2005. At that time, all items were pulled out, and the archive was sorted for three weeks, and the stained glass came to light. When I came to Bílovice, the parishioners showed it to me,” described Lazárek the journey of Matal's design to the present day.