I’m more amused about AI’s response to whether it could tell me anything about this as it replied:
“The stone is very worn, and Latin inscriptions are unforgiving little beasts even before several centuries of feet have gone over them. I can provide some words with reasonable confidence but why put these stones where people walk over them?”
It seems to be humouring itself now, but I like its style. Anyway, the ‘Memento Mori’ which means something like ‘remember, you’ve got to die’ is a cheery little number at the bottom of the stone. It dates to 1730 although it’s not clear whether they’ve moved it because of the damage done during the Second World War. I suspect that it hasn’t moved very far, if at all, and in response to AI, it’s likely a good thing that they didn’t have this as a memorial on the wall, as that would have been less likely to survive the various attacks that there have been on this building.
However, this stone is readable enough without AI and it’s the tomb of Kaspar Andreas von Elmendorff (1658-1730). He was born in 1658 at Füchtel, located to the south west of Bremen, and became a Catholic canon in the otherwise mostly Lutheran cathedral chapter of Lübeck. Remarkably, he received the expectation of a canonry at Lübeck Cathedral when he was only ten, which goes to show what happens when you’re from a wealthy family.
He later held a canonry at St Alexander in Wildeshausen, before being ordained subdeacon in Münster in 1681 and priest in Hildesheim in 1700. He moved permanently to Lübeck in 1697, became an Imperial Councillor in 1705 and eventually served as senior of the cathedral chapter. He was also caught up in the rather tangled 1705 Lübeck bishopric succession dispute, supporting the Danish candidate Prince Carl, who ultimately lost out to Christian August of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf after a diplomatic intervention which all sounds very complex.
Elmendorff died in Lübeck in 1730 and was buried in the southern choir ambulatory of Lübeck Cathedral. Rather surprisingly perhaps, some of his donated liturgical silverwork survives, which is some achievement although it’s primarily just a saucer that is left.