Procida

Historical signals
Procida is the smallest island between the three islands in the Neapolitan Gulf, and  many geologists  think there was an ancient separation  between Ischia and Procida.  . The little island of Vivara , that  is an integrating part, it boasts human takeovers, between the most ancient documented in the Campania, starting from the neolithic period. Of volcanic origin, as all the flegrean zone to which it belongs, Procida conserves the old craters, now in part eroded, the creeks of the Chiaiolella , the Carbonchio and the Old Sink . According to Plinio the Prochyta name derives from the Greek: prochyo (deep) but more reliable they are the theories of  Marchianò , that it cites the ancient term Prei pelasgo-Albanian ysta (near) is reported to the greatest Pithecusa (Ischia) and of  Marcello Eusebio Scotti and Antonio Maria Scialoja , that they support that the island anciently was called Procima (first Cyme ) for the closeness to the Mount of Cuma . The discovery in Vivara of Mycenean ceramics  filler us still to the Greeks as first inhabitants of the island fused with unavoidable native presences.
Many testimonies of Roman age demonstrate as Procida followed also the vicissitudes of Ischia and Capri .
Honored from the poets and the Latin historians Procida it was cited by Virgilio that called it " high " and Stazio that defined it "aspera" (steep).
In the period of the Byzantine Duchy it was already famous for its wine and the Conte di Miseno expected already the homage of twenty urns of Procida wine.
It endured the breakdowns of the Visigoths of Alarico and the Vandals of Genserico . Continuous Saracens  raids that afflicted the Campanian coasts forced the inhabitants of Miseno to shelter in  Procida and the Duke joined that territory to the jurisdiction of the island so that it derived the name Mount of Procida for the tip of Miseno .
About to the first century of the Thousand the Benedictines  settled down themselves in Procida in the coenobium of S. Margherita The Old that surpassed the beach of the Chiaiolella giving beginning to that great closing of faith that will fill up the island of churches and nails head until all 1800's. On ending of the Norman reign , the island become feud of the family that  will take the name from it and will have in Giovanni from Procida , hero of the Sicilian Vespers of the 1282 , the first true gentleman of the island. Perhaps the baronial castle had to stand in the citadel of the Earth Bulwark where the great religious   complex that has been, in part in modern times is found, center of a sadly famous penitentiary, from little abolished with the transfer in other penal buildings of the last lifers.
The island passed to other lordships until that then, in 1734 , with the advent of Carl III of Borbone and of the Reign of the Two Sicilies, its history fused with that one of Naples .
Until to some years ago the island it was much jealous of its " privacy ", currently the crisis of the navy has carried the interests of Procida towards a remunerative tourism.
Every year, in occasion of the maritime festivities  of ancient popular origin, they choose " the Graziella " in memory of the personage of La Martine .
The Holy Friday celebrates the festivity of the Died Christ  with solemn rituals and one colorful procession of the statue of the Christ, that it comes exposed to the feet of the greater altar of the Abbey of Saint Michele , is work of one scultore of mangers, Carmine Lanriceni , than it realized it in 1728 . The Lanriceni lived to Naples and was a good person , but it is not known because, for many years, it said that it had been condemned to the life imprisonment for a  cruel crime and that, freed for sovereign grace, it had carved the statue in sign of gratitude. The festivity begins at the seven in the morning, with the gathering of the Lollards confraternity , and then, at the sound of the bugle and in the dark seam of the drum, the procession begins that will last  until evening, between religious rituals and popular festival.