Templar Cross vs. Maltese Cross: How to Tell Them Apart

• knighttemplar
• August 4, 2026
• Categories: History & Lore
• Tags: Crusader Cross, Knights Templar, Templar Symbols

If you have ever shopped for a crusader emblem, you have probably hit the same snag: is that eight-pointed star a Templar cross or a Maltese cross? The two are cousins in the world of holy-warrior heraldry, they get swapped constantly online, and mixing them up is one of the most common mistakes in medieval iconography. Here is the quick answer. The Templar cross is a cross pattée — a red cross on a white ground whose arms flare out to broad, flat ends. The Maltese cross has eight sharp points and belongs to a different brotherhood entirely, the Knights Hospitaller. This guide gives you the tells to separate them in seconds, plus the history that explains why they look related but are not the same.

The Templar cross: a red cross pattée on white

The badge of the Knights Templar was the cross pattée (also spelled and called the cross formée). Picture a cross whose four arms are narrow where they meet in the center and then flare outward, widening to broad, roughly straight ends. It is not spiky and it is not eight-pointed; it reads as a solid, four-armed cross with a distinctive splayed silhouette. That flared shape is the heart of the design, and it is what your eye should lock onto first.

The coloring matters as much as the shape. The Order wore a white mantle, and the red cross was granted by Pope Eugene III in 1147, roughly a generation after the brotherhood was founded around 1119. Red on white became the instantly recognizable livery of the Temple, worn on cloaks, banners, and gear. If you want to go deeper, the cross pattée is only one member of a wider family of Templar cross types that turn up on seals, churches, and battle equipment.

You will also see the pattée drawn with slightly different proportions — some versions have gently concave arm ends, others nearly straight — yet the underlying logic never changes: a compact four-armed cross that grows wider toward the tips. Medieval artists were not working from one fixed template, so small variation is normal and does not turn a pattée into a different symbol. What stays constant is the four-arm count and that outward flare.

Three features to memorize:

• Four arms, never eight points.
• Arms that flare outward from a narrow center to broad ends.
• The classic coloring, red on white.

The Maltese cross: eight points and the Hospitallers

The Maltese cross is a different animal altogether. It is built from four arrowhead-shaped arms that meet at a single point in the center. Each arm ends in a deep V-shaped notch, and because every arm is forked in this way, you end up with eight sharp points ringing the outside. That count — eight — is the single most reliable giveaway you have.

It belongs to the Knights Hospitaller, formally the Order of St John, later world-famous as the Knights of Malta after they settled on that island in 1530. Their coloring is usually the mirror image of the Templars’: a white cross on a red or black ground. A popular tradition says the eight points stand for the eight Beatitudes, or for eight obligations a knight had to keep. That reading is a later interpretation layered onto the emblem rather than a documented meaning from the order’s early days, so it is fair to treat it as devotional symbolism, not established fact.

The form is also genuinely striking, which is part of why it spread far beyond the Hospitallers into military decorations, fire-service badges, and civic emblems around the world. That long afterlife is a big reason the eight-pointed cross now feels vaguely “medieval knight” to modern eyes, even when a given design has nothing to do with the Templars at all.

In short, the Maltese cross is an eight-pointed emblem tied to the Hospitallers, while the Templar cross is a four-armed cross pattée. Different order, different shape, different colours.

Four quick tells for a side-by-side check

When you are staring at a pendant, a patch, or a tattoo and cannot decide, run through this short checklist. Any one point can be misleading on its own, but together they settle the question fast.

1. Count the points. Eight sharp points means Maltese. Four broad arms means Templar.
2. Look at the arm ends. V-notched forks equal Maltese; flared, flat ends equal a cross pattée.
3. Check the colors. Red on white leans Templar; white on red or black leans Hospitaller.
4. Ask which order it names. “Knights of Malta” or “St John” points to the Maltese cross; “Temple of Solomon” points to the Templar cross.

Remember that modern makers recolor everything, so a black-and-white pattée is still a Templar cross and a gold Maltese cross is still Hospitaller. Judge by the geometry first and the palette second.

Why the two crosses get muddled

Part of the confusion is genuinely historical. The Templars and Hospitallers were rival military-monastic orders born within a few decades of each other in the same crusader world, both fielding armored knights under a cross. People assume their badges must therefore be interchangeable. They are not. Crucially, the Templars never used the Maltese cross; that eight-pointed form is firmly Hospitaller, and later the mark of Malta.

It also helps to know the neighbors on the heraldic block. The Jerusalem cross of the crusader kingdom is a large central cross flanked by four smaller ones, which is different again, and the plain black cross people sometimes label “Templar” actually belonged to the Teutonic Knights. Getting familiar with the broader vocabulary of Templar symbols and their enduring meanings makes all of these distinctions far easier to hold in your head.

The orders behind the two crosses

Symbols make far more sense once you know who carried them. The Knights Templar were founded around 1119 as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, taking their name from their quarters on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Their red cross pattée on a white mantle became the badge of a disciplined brotherhood of warrior-monks that grew wealthy and powerful before its suppression in 1312.

The Knights Hospitaller, by contrast, began even earlier as a hospital caring for sick and poor pilgrims, winning papal recognition in 1113. They later took up arms too, and their white eight-pointed cross traveled with them to Rhodes and then to the island of Malta — which is precisely how it came to be called the “Maltese cross.” Remembering that one order was rooted in the Temple and the other in a hospital of St John is often the quickest mental shortcut for telling the emblems apart.

Wearing the right cross with confidence

Once you can read the shapes, choosing what to wear becomes a matter of meaning rather than guesswork. If you are drawn to the story of the warrior-monks of the Temple, you want the red cross pattée on white, ideally paired with authentic Templar imagery rather than a generic eight-pointed star pulled from the wrong order. Getting the emblem right is a small act of respect for the history behind it.

The bottom line is simple. Count the points and study the arm ends: eight points and V-notches mean the Maltese cross of the Hospitallers, while four flared arms in red on white mean the true Templar cross pattée. Keep that one comparison in mind and you will never mislabel a crusader emblem again.