The ritual form of “à répit” (rite of “return to life” or “double death”), practiced between the early 1000s until the 1900s, presumably originated in northern Europe and then expanded to countries beyond the Alps: France, Piedmont, and the Italian Alpine arc. The purpose of the rite was to give a proper burial to those stillborn children who, as such, could not obtain Baptism, and thus to allow their little souls access to Heaven, thus avoiding the eternal condemnation of “limbo.” Parents thus began to take those little bodies to isolated Marian chapels or shrines, far from prying eyes, where they could hope to revive them for a moment and baptize them. These places of faith, cherished especially by popular and peasant religiosity, saw the roads beaten by macabre pilgrimages. During the rite, the cadaver was placed on an altar between some candles in the presence of the Virgin Mary, invoking a sign of temporary resurrection: the movement of a feather placed on the child's mouth, the redness of the cheeks or a leakage of urine would be enough to allow Baptism to be administered before the second death. The lucky ones who were able to obtain the sacrament could be buried in consecrated places, such as the sanctuary cemetery, or they were laid inside a well with coins over their eyes to ease their passage into the afterlife. Many beliefs arose in this regard, one of which was that the souls of the unbaptized haunted the travelers by appearing to them as fatuous fires. For centuries this practice provided hope for parents who wanted to ensure eternal life for their stillborn children so that they could be found in the Afterlife.