Engraving by an unknown artist, realized around 1480, taken from The Illustrated Bartsch. Vol. 83. The image shows the resurrection of the dead from their graves.
For Christian doctrine, Christ’s Resurrection is the central event, around which the entire history of humankind gravitates. The first Christians took from late Judaism the idea of a general resurrection of the dead, at the end of times, in a renewed humanity called to live on a new earth. The Day of the Last Judgment, the souls of the deceased shall take back their own bodies, in imitation with Christ’s Resurrection. In the folk conception, these souls continued to exist, in a world not so far from that of the living, and could sometimes manifest themselves visually, particularly in certain moments of the year, when the boundaries between the worlds could temporarily be attenuated or even disappear. This occurred especially during Carnival, when the masked parades and the noise of cowbells announced the temporary return of the dead among the living.

[Image: http://library.artstor.org]