Jerusalem Cross vs Templar Cross: What’s the Difference?

• knighttemplar
• July 17, 2026
• Categories: History & Lore
• Tags: Crusader Cross, Knights Templar, Templar Symbols

The Jerusalem cross and the Templar cross are the two most famous emblems of the crusading age — and the two most often mixed up. Here is the difference in one breath: the Jerusalem cross is a large central cross surrounded by four smaller crosses, and it served as the emblem of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem; the Templar cross is a single red cross pattée, granted to the Knights Templar as the badge of their order. One belonged to a kingdom, the other to a brotherhood of warrior monks. The stories behind them differ just as much as the designs, and knowing both lets you read either symbol at a glance.

The short answer: two crosses, side by side

If you only remember one section of this guide, make it this one.

• Design: the Jerusalem cross is a cross potent — its arms end in short crossbars — with four small Greek crosses tucked into the quadrants, five crosses in total. The Templar cross is one cross, most often shown as a cross pattée whose arms flare outward to broad ends.
• Color: the Jerusalem cross was famously rendered in gold on silver, a deliberate breach of heraldry’s rule against placing metal on metal, meant to mark the kingdom as unlike any other on earth. The Templar cross was red on white: blood on purity.
• Who bore it: the Jerusalem cross stood for the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291) and, later, for pilgrims to the Holy Land. The Templar cross marked the men of the Order of the Temple, founded around 1119 and suppressed in 1312.
• Meaning: the five crosses are usually read as the five wounds of Christ, or as Christ and the four evangelists carrying the gospel to the four corners of the world. The single red cross proclaimed a monk-knight’s readiness to die a martyr.

Strictly speaking, neither one is the “crusader cross” — and that loose umbrella term is a big part of why the two keep getting confused, as we will see below.

The Jerusalem cross: the emblem of a kingdom

When the armies of the First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099, they set up a Christian kingdom in the city, and tradition attributes the five-fold cross to its first ruler, Godfrey of Bouillon — the knight who famously refused a royal crown and styled himself Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre instead. Over the following decades the five-fold cross became fixed as the arms of the kingdom and its rulers.

Its layered symbolism is what has kept it alive for nine centuries. The most common readings — the five wounds of Christ, Christ with the four evangelists, the gospel carried to the four corners of the world — each treat the four small crosses as satellites of the great central one. We unpack those interpretations in detail in our guide to why the Jerusalem cross has five crosses.

After the kingdom’s last stronghold fell in 1291, the emblem refused to die. Pilgrims carried it home stitched on clothing and inked into their skin; the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land adopted it; and the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre bears it to this day. That long pilgrim afterlife is why the symbol still reads as a badge of devotion to the Holy Land rather than of any single nation.

The Templar cross: the badge of a brotherhood

The Knights Templar began around 1119, when Hugues de Payens and a handful of companions vowed to protect pilgrims on the dangerous roads to Jerusalem. For nearly thirty years their habit was a plain white mantle with no emblem at all. Only in 1147 did Pope Eugenius III grant the brothers the right to wear a red cross, a sign of the martyrdom every Templar was expected to accept rather than abandon the field.

Red carried the weight of the message: the blood of Christ, and the brother’s own blood offered in return. The white ground beneath it stood for the purity his Rule demanded. The exact shape varied across seals, shields, and manuscripts — the flared cross pattée is the popular image, though the Order also used plainer forms. For the full story of what the emblem stood for, our deep dive into the Templar cross meaning takes each layer in turn.

The crucial contrast with the Jerusalem cross is who could wear it. The five-fold cross belonged to a realm and, in time, to every pilgrim who loved it. The red cross belonged to sworn brothers alone — canonically protected insignia of a religious order. Wearing it without the vows was no fashion choice in the twelfth century; it was fraud.

Why the two get confused

Blame the word crusader. Men who took crusading vows — the crucesignati, “those signed with the cross” — sewed cloth crosses of many shapes and colors onto their garments. At Gisors in 1188 the kings of France and England even divided the palette between their armies, with green assigned to the Flemings. “Crusader cross” has therefore never named one design, yet today it gets applied to the Jerusalem cross and the Templar cross almost interchangeably.

Modern headlines have not helped. When a senior US official’s Jerusalem-cross tattoo became national news, coverage called it a crusader cross, a Templar cross, and everything in between — it is specifically the five-fold Jerusalem cross. If ink is what brought you here, our guide to the crusader cross tattoo meaning sorts out which design says what on skin.

There is also simple visual drift. Rendered small — on a coin, a pendant, a screen icon — a cross potent’s barred arms and a cross pattée’s flared arms blur together. Color is the fastest tiebreaker: gold on white or silver points to Jerusalem, red on white points to the Temple.

The Iron Cross and the Maltese cross: other lookalikes

Two more designs regularly crash this conversation. The Iron Cross, the Prussian and later German military decoration created in 1813, descends not from the Templars but from the black cross of the Teutonic Order, a separate crusading brotherhood. Its silhouette resembles a cross pattée, which is why “Templar cross vs Iron Cross” is such a common search — but the lineage, the color, and the modern connotations are entirely different.

The Maltese cross belongs to the Knights Hospitaller, the Templars’ great rivals and contemporaries. Look for eight sharp points — four arrowhead-shaped arms meeting at the center — traditionally read as the eight Beatitudes. If the arms end in points rather than flat flares or crossbars, you are looking at the Hospitallers’ emblem, not the Templars’ and not Jerusalem’s.

A one-glance field guide: count five crosses and it is the Jerusalem cross; one red flared cross is Templar; eight points is Maltese; straight black arms is Teutonic — the family tree behind the Iron Cross.

Wearing history: which cross says what about you

Choosing between them today is really choosing between two stories. The Jerusalem cross says pilgrimage: faith bound to a place, carried home. The Templar cross says brotherhood: discipline, sacrifice, and loyalty to something larger than yourself. Both are worn proudly by people who know exactly what they mean — and both invite questions from people who do not, which is half the pleasure of wearing them.

If the Templar side of the story is yours, our Eagle – Templar Shirt puts the Order’s emblem in a bold modern design that carries nine centuries of meaning without saying a word. Whichever cross you choose, wear it the way the men who created it did: deliberately.