Which pope was De revolutionibus dedicated to in 1543?

De revolutionibus was dedicated in 1543 to Pope Paul III.

Nicolaus Copernicus addressed the dedication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium to Paul III, who was pope from 1534 to 1549. Copernicus presented the work within the established scholarly and religious world of his time, even though its Sun-centered arrangement challenged the dominant geocentric tradition.

The dedication was also a strategic act of patronage and protection. A papal dedication gave the book prestige and signaled that serious astronomical inquiry could be discussed within learned Catholic culture. Copernicus’s book was not immediately treated as a simple declaration of doctrinal revolution; its reception developed over decades.

Readers sometimes confuse Paul III with later popes connected to the book’s censorship and correction. De revolutionibus was suspended and later amended after the condemnation of Copernicanism in the seventeenth century, but those later events do not change the identity of the pope named in the original 1543 dedication.