Cross potent

A cross potent (plural: crosses potent), also known as a crutch cross, is a form of heraldic cross with crossbars or "crutches" at the four ends. In German, it is known as a Krückenkreuz (literally "crutches cross"). Potent is an old word for a crutch, from a late Middle English alteration of Old French potence 'crutch', from Latin potentia 'power' (which in medieval Latin meant 'crutch'). The term potent is also used in heraldic terminology to describe a 'T' shaped alteration of vair, and potenté is a line of partition contorted into a series of 'T' shapes.

The cross potent already appeared in Neolithic petroglyphs, dating back to 2500 BC.

In Old Persian, the sign stood for *maguš 'magician, magi'. It may have been borrowed into Chinese as the character 巫, pronounced *myag in Old Chinese and as wū in standard Mandarin.

A large cross potent, surrounded by four smaller Greek crosses upon a silver field, was the Crusaders' cross, being the heraldic design in the coat of arms worn by Godfrey of Bouillon during the First Crusade. Now known as the Jerusalem cross, it remained in use as the coat of arms and flag of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Upon the passage of the 1924 Schilling Act it was used as a national symbol of the Austrian First Republic, minted on the back of the Groschen coins. In 1934 it became the emblem of the Austrofascist Federal State of Austria, adopted from the ruling Fatherland's Front, an authoritarian traditionalist political organisation led by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.

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