Just as I thought, there must be a reason behind every piece of code. I don't know MIDI specification by heart, but I had a feeling, that it might be the reason. And (unfortunately) I was right.

This is an excerpt from the official MIDI specification. The MSB destinguishes between status and data bytes. That's why one does not simply use 8 bits for patch data. Bummer. Using only 2 bits for bank switching doesn't sound good enough to me, so I will probably rewrite the code and use 2 subsequent bytes to carry 2 bits each. Pros? Moar banks. Cons? I won't be able to reuse as much code as currently. Back to square 2.