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
Ekaterina Sedia currently teaches plant ecology and botany at Stockton College and lives with her husband Christopher Sedia and their cats. In her spare time, she blogs about fashion, food, cats, books, television, and feminism. Ekaterina Sedia attended Moscow State University. She then moved to Boston and worked at MIT’s department of brain and cognitive sciences as a research assistant. After that she moved to New Jersey and went to graduate school at Rutgers University-Camden, which is where she got her degree in ecology and evolution in 2001. Today she works at Stockton University teaching plant ecology and evolution. In this story