[Bell Historians] Bell numbering in the early 16th century

[David Bagley]

In northern Italy, it is still the custom to number a ring of 6 from highest 
note to lowest note as 612345. This is because traditionally if a tower had 
5 bells, then in augmenting them, they added a 6th bell. The treble is 
numbered and callad as "sestina", or the "little 6th".

Back here, I suppose that it is possible that the first bell that a church 
installed was number 1, then the next one was the 2nd one, etc, This could 
mean that the numbering and the notes/weights could be in just about any 
order!

I agree that before the development of ringing bells together in a scale, 
there was probably no need to number the bells, but to name them instead.

David