How our cristen men chosen a very patriarke in Iherusalem

William Morris, 1834-96, Illuminator

Edward Burne-Jones, Illustrator

1893

29 x 20.8 cm.

The History of Godefrey of Bologne

Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 65

Collection: Rare Books and Manuscripts, Boston Public Library

The History of Godefrey of Bologne was the fifth and last of William Morris's reprints of books done by the man who introduced printing into England, William Caxton. Morris used Caxton's 1481 edition corrected for the press by Morris's son-in-law, H. Halliday Sparling (Henderson, 298-99). [Continued below]

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Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith

Godfrey de Bouillon, as he is called by modern historians, was elected ruler of Jerusalem after the success of the first Crusade in 1099. Godfrey's lineage and kingship were glorified and elaborated in fourteenth-century chansons de geste, and he was depicted as one of the Nine Worthies or Champions of Chivalry in poetry and paintings by Gothic and Renaissance artists (Keen, 121). The story of his lineage, created a century after his death, is a redaction of the Lohengrin story, where Godfrey is made a grandson of the Swan Knight.

The interweaving of secular and sacred modes that characterized the Gothic Revival is brought into sharp focus by Morris's printing of such important books of the chivalric tradition as The Order of Chivalry and the History of Godefrey, both in 1893. Morris published Caxton's version of Ramon Lull's The Order of Chivalry along with his own translation of a thirteenth-century French poem, L'Ordene de Chevalerie. These works and the Godefrey set forth codes of human behavior and government emphasizing traditions of service, largesse, and good manners, as well as pride in ancestry and status (Keen, 42). Morris and his Socialist friends hoped to reorganize the social and political order along such lines and bring about the "New Jerusalem," so it is not surprising that he was interested in the life and works of the first elected King of that city. An earlier Victorian book designer, Henry Noel Humphreys, had used an ivory-covered psalter that belonged to Queen Melisende (Godfrey's grand-niece) as a starting point for his design of the binding on his Miracles of Our Lord (cat. 8).

Attracted to the Old English language, Morris chose to print Caxton's Godefrey without modernizing the spelling, yet another example of the cultural historicism of the Victorians. Page 432, printed in red and black Troy type, is characteristic of the book as a whole except that it is one of the few paired pages with a leafy marginal ornament coiling into three sides of the page. Eight- and six-line illuminated initial letters and three fleurons constitute the rest of the ornament.

References

Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.

Caxton, William. The History of Godefrey of Bologne and the Conquest of Iherusalem. Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1893. Designer-Illuminator: William Morris.

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Last modified 25 December 2013