Pope Alexander VI the "portico" of St. Peter's and commissioned a marble door. This door lasted until 1618, when another door was installed in the new basilica. In a ceremony similar to today's, Alexander was carried in the "sedia gestatoria" to St. Peter's. He and his assistants, bearing candles, processed to the holy door, as the choir chanted . The Pope knocked on the door three times, workers moved it from the inside, and everyone then crossed the threshold to enter into a period of penance and reconciliation. Thus, Pope Alexander formalized the rite and began a longstanding tradition that is still in
Religion and geography Religion and geography Religion and geography is the study of the impact of geography, i.e. place and space, on religious belief. Another aspect of the relationship between religion and geography is "religious geography", in which geographical ideas are influenced by religion, such as early map-making, and the "biblical geography" that developed in the 16th century to identify places from the Bible. Traditionally, the relationship between geography and religion can clearly be seen by the influences of religion in shaping cosmological understandings of the world. From the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the study of geography and religion mainly focused on mapping