PASCHAL TERMINUS. — This is the date of the day that coincides with the fourteenth moon of the “first month” (nīsān, according to the Hebrew liturgical calendar), which fell at the spring equinox or immediately followed II. The Council of Nicaea (325) established the celebration of Christian Easter on this basis, fixing it to the Sunday after the paschal terminus.
To determine the date, some tables of concordance between the paschal terminus and the golden numbers were compiled, later modified after the Gregorian reform. For the period between 1900 and 2199, the coincidence is as follows:
| Golden Number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---------------|---|---|---|---|
| Paschal Terminus | 14 | 14 | 23 | 11 |
| Golden Number | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| Paschal Terminus | 31 | 31 | 18 | 28 |
| Golden Number | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| Paschal Terminus | 16 | 16 | 25 | 13 |
| Golden Number | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| Paschal Terminus | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Golden Number | 17 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| Paschal Terminus | 17 | 17 | 27 | 27 |
Thus, for 1953, which has the golden number 16, the paschal terminus falls on 30 March, which is a Monday, and therefore Easter is the following Sunday, 5 April.