"Acis Realis" / "Jacis Realis" translation?

[VotM]

In the records from Piedimonte Etneo, I have come across a phrase (or location) that I am having problems translating into meaningful terms: "Acis Realis", or alternately "Jacis Realis". The attached images show this phrase in context.

Google Search seems to locate "Jacis Realis" in one place: a source on books.google.com. Online translators have not provided a useful meaning for either variation. The closest I've come to anything useful is a note on FamilySearch stating that Jacis might be an older form of the community named Geraci, which might fit if the "Cius" preceeding "Acis" is an abbreviation for "Civitus".

Could anyone provide a translation for this term? And, if this is referring to a place, could anyone identify the current day name for the area this location refers to? Thanks!

[erudita74]

civitatis (town) of Acis Realis (Acireale) -a town in the province of Catania)

Erudita

[VotM]

Thanks, Erudita. Wow... looks like I'll have a lot of churches to check over to see if I can find the original one for the Samperi's. But better that than the other extreme!

[erudita74]

Definitely. There are online church records on familysearch. Hope you have success with them. I don't recall offhand what years the records are for this town.

Erudita

[VotM]

At a glance, I see six churches with records from the relevant time period. Three of them only go back far enough to cover a likely marriage record, the other three will allow for much deeper delving if there is a match on any of them.

[VotM]

Long story short: I may have been very lucky. The Samperi family that I am interested in researching appears to be in the marriage index for La Chiesa di Maria Santissima Annunziata, which is the church with the most extensive records on for Acireale on FamilySearch.

What makes this an especially lucky find is that one Samperi who had migrated to Piedimonte Etneo helped point the way to another who had migrated there a generation later. There seemed to be a high percentage of Samperi's with the "Maestro" designation who appeared in Piedimonte's records in the early-mid 1700's. The earliest Samperi arrived at a time when the Church in that comune was recording a person's town of origin. (They appeared to have dropped that practice in the mid-1700's.) It seemed reasonable that a group of distinctive persons with the same surname might be related, or at least might have come from the same place.

So now the fun begins... and hopefully it won't end with the line disappearing before the start of the records available. Thanks again!