The running foot was common in traditional typography and can be useful as well as decorative.
Two different use cases are:
- to provide a brief summary of that page’s contents.
- to give the first word of the following page.
It has fallen out of fashion because pages often aren’t set manually anymore and implementing a running foot means more work than in metal type (among other reasons).
Actually, your example from TexSX (the bible page) uses the latter technique: the en on the bottom right side of the page is the first word of the next page.
I guess it is of limited value for websites, though.
Edit: I realized that the running foot is actually used on websites quite frequently: e. g. in articles that spread over multiple pages.
See this example in the German newspaper Zeit Online (Times Online):
Sie sind gefeuert (You’re fired).
The article is presented on two pages.
On the bottom of the first page, there’s a link to the second page: nächste Seite (next page).
Next to that button, the heading of the second page is shown: Neue Kommunikation mit alten Strukturen (New communication using old structures).
This is a typical example of a running foot in an online environment.
The frame is another typical decoration that has lost its place in everyday print, but I can imagine it could very well be applied to online content.
Here’s an example (also from TexSX):

One of the best ways (if not the besttm) to “decorate” your text probably is to give it the right amount of space on the screen, with sufficient white space around it.
You could follow a traditional page layout to evoke a “classical” feeling.