a festival of the Christian church, observed in memory of our Saviour's resurrection.

The Greeks call it pascha, the Latins pascha, an Hebrew word signifying passover, applied to the Jewish feast of the passover. It is called Easter in English, from the goddess Ostara, worshipped by the Saxons with peculiar ceremonies in the month of April.

The Asiatic churches kept their Easter upon the very same day the Jews observed their passover, and others on the first Sunday after the first full moon in the new year. This controversy was determined in the council of Nice; when it was ordained that Easter should be kept upon one and the same day, which should always be a Sunday, in all Christian churches in the world. For the method of finding Easter by calculation, see Chronology, no. 31.