Hey y‘all,
Today I’ve purchased a „Templar“ Robe from an Armory-Shop where you can get all kinds of stuff from the middle-ages. The robes are white and have a typical, red Christian cross sewn into them. The Cashier told me that those robes are kind of ahistorical, as the robes of the real Templar knights had a „Cross pattée“ on them, and not a „normal“ cross. So my question is- How did historically accurate Crusader armour look and where there examples of normal Christian crosses being worn on them?( I’ll post an example in the comments)
I answered a few previous questions about Templar "uniforms" (and the uniforms of the other military orders too), hopefully they will help a little bit:
How and when did the red cross pattée on a white field become the symbol of Knights Templar?
Do crusaders with red and black colours belong to an order/religious sect?
In short, all we really know about Templar knights was that they wore a white tunic with a red cross. Templar sergeants (soldiers who were not knights) wore a black or brown coat with a red cross.
Traditionally it's depicted as a cross pattée but that doesn't necessarily mean it actually appeared that way all the time. Thanks to the nature of clothing, it's kind of rare for actual items of clothing to survive, and I'm not aware of any examples of surviving Templar tunics. However, there is a bit of evidence from art and architecture - Templars are sometimes depicted with a cross pattée, and that style of cross is often found on Templar tombstones.
So at some point, everyone apparently associated that kind of cross with the Templars; but did that cross always appear on their tunics, or could they use any cross type? We don't really know.
