Hugo of Santalla was a significant translator of the first part of the 12th century. From Arabic originals, he produced Latin translations of texts on alchemy

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

, astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

, astrology

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

 and geomancy

Geomancy

Geomancy is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand...

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He is thought to have been a Spanish priest, working in Tarazona

Tarazona

Tarazona is a municipality in the Spanish province of Zaragoza, in the autonomous community of Aragon. It is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tarazona and the capital of the Tarazona y el Moncayo Aragonese comarca.- History :...

. Michael, bishop of Tarazona was a patron.

Works attributed to him are translations of Alfraganus Haly, the Liber de secretis naturae of Apollonius of Tyana

Apollonius of Tyana

Apollonius of Tyana was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Little is certainly known about him...

, De Spatula on divination, and the Tabula Smaragdina. His Liber Aristotilis was an anthology of material with Greek and Persian origins, none of it now attributed to Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

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