17th century German definitions of polymathy

In thinking about possible definitions of polymathy, we’re going to jump quite a bit ahead to the seventeenth century. There was an obscure German intellectual named Ioannes Wower or Wowern, who defined polymathy in his 1603 De polymathia tractatio (Treatise on Polymathy) as “knowledge of diverse things, drawing on every kind of discipline and ranging very widely.”

You know that Wower is obscure when Wikipedia doesn't have an article on him. So here is a little information on him from Deutsche Biographie, an information portal sponsored by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Wower's definition is pretty broad, but a slightly later, far more renowned German, Daniel Georg Morhof, went even further. He defined polymathy in his 1688 Polyhistor as “the extent and actual state of all living knowledge.”

Could it get any broader than that? Those early Germans really liked setting the bar high!