Grand Cross is the highest grade in many orders of knighthood. Sometimes the holders of the highest grade are referred to "commanders grand cross", "knights grand cross" or just "grand crosses"; in other cases the actual insignia itself is called "the grand cross".
Alternatively, in some other orders, the highest grade may be called the "grand cordon", "grand collar" etc. In those cases the rank of grand cross may come after another rank (e.g. the Portuguese Order of Saint James of the Sword).
Read more about Grand Cross: Denomination "Grand Cordons"
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or cross:
“What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We’re told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
The first cat that was ever killed by Care.”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)