<P> Nicolaus Copernicus published the definitive statement of his system in De Revolutionibus in 1543 . Copernicus began to write it in 1506 and finished it in 1530, but did not publish it until the year of his death . Although he was in good standing with the Church and had dedicated the book to Pope Paul III, the published form contained an unsigned preface by Osiander defending the system and arguing that it was useful for computation even if its hypotheses were not necessarily true . Possibly because of that preface, the work of Copernicus inspired very little debate on whether it might be heretical during the next 60 years . There was an early suggestion among Dominicans that the teaching of Heliocentrism should be banned, but nothing came of it at the time . </P> <P> Some years after the publication of De Revolutionibus John Calvin preached a sermon in which he denounced those who "pervert the order of nature" by saying that "the sun does not move and that it is the earth that revolves and that it turns". </P> <P> On the other hand, Calvin is not responsible for another famous quotation which has often been misattributed to him: "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?" It has long been established that this line cannot be found in any of Calvin's works . It has been suggested that the quotation was originally sourced from the works of Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius . </P> <P> Prior to the publication of De Revolutionibus, the most widely accepted system had been proposed by Ptolemy, in which the Earth was the center of the universe and all celestial bodies orbited it . Tycho Brahe, arguably the most accomplished astronomer of his time, advocated against Copernicus's heliocentric system and for an alternative to the Ptolemaic geocentric system: a geo - heliocentric system now known as the Tychonic system in which the five then known planets orbit the sun, while the sun and the moon orbit the earth . </P>

Who realized that the planets orbit the sun