As the title says, is there any recorded information about the origins of the most recognizable Templar symbol? The Latin Rule dictates that brothers should wear habits "of one colour, that is white or black or brown", but doesn't mention any insignia on them. I found a pretty suspicious looking article stating that the symbol "was not an ornament (of the Templars) until 1147 when Pope Eugenius III approved of it", but it doesn't mention the circumstances of this alleged event or cite the source of the claim. I also found dubious theories about the symbol originating from the Cross of St. George, or the Templars adopting it from the Republic of Genoa, but these don't sound very plausible to me.
I'd appreciate it if anyone could shed some light on the subject.
As you note, the Rule says:
- The surcoats of the sergeant brothers should be completely black, with a red cross on the front and back.
(Judith Mary Upton-War, The Rule of the Templars (Boydell, 1997), pg 53.)
The white mantle and a red cross is not mentioned in the Rule, only the red cross/black surcoat of the sergeants are mentioned. The Rule doesn't say what the knght brothers wear. For that we need to look to other sources: according to William of Tyre:
"...in the time of Pope Eugenius [III], it is said, they started to sew on their mantles crosses of red cloth to make them more distinctive, and this was true not only of the knights but also of their inferior brothers called sergeants."
(Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, The Templars: Selected Sources (Manchester University Press, 2002), pg. 26.)
William was the official historian of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and probably the most important source for the early history of the Templars.
Another 12th-century source, an anonymous pilgrim who visited Jerusalem and was escorted by the Templars, also says:
"They wear white mantles with a red cross..."
(Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pg. 179.)
We don't actually know whether Eugenius specifically approved it...it looks more like they just decided to do this on their own. The 1147 date is an assumption because that's when Eugenius met with the Templar leadership in France at their Paris headquarters, along with King Louis VII and others who had vowed to go on crusade. So based on that, William's statement that it was "in the time of Pope Eugenius", and later accounts like the anonymous pilgrim, someone somewhere along the line decided that Eugenius approved it during that meeting. But that's pretty circumstantial and there's no real evidence for it.
There were Genoese merchant quarters in the crusader cities, and English crusaders, but did the Templars get the red cross from them, or did they get it from the Templars, or is it just a coincidence? Unfortunately the sources don't say. No one knows why or exactly when they adopted it.