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The Ecumenical Patriarchate and Mount Athos, and also the Greek Orthodox Churches in the diaspora under the Patriarchate use a black double-headed eagle in a yellow field as their flag or emblem. The eagle is depicted as clutching a sceptre and an orb with a crown above and between its two heads.
An earlier variant of the flag, used in the 1980s, combined the double-headed eagle design with the blue-and-white stripes of the flag of Greece. The design is sometimes dubbed the "Byzantine imperial flag", and is considered the actual historical banner of the Byzantine Empire. The double-headed eagle was historically used as an emblem in the late Byzantine period (14th–15th centuries) on imperial clothing and accoutrements by both the Palaiologos emperors of the Byzantine Empire and the Grand Komnenos rulers of the Empire of Trebizond, descendants of the byzantine imperial family of the same name. There is a depiction of the flag on the ship that bore Emperor John VIII Palaiologos to the Council of Florence on the Filarete Doors of Old St. Peter's Basilica, and the use of the flag in this context is also recorded by Sphrantzes.
Another flag used by the Orthodox Church of Greece is based on the tetragrammic cross of the Palaiologoi, with the added inscription of TOYTῼ NIKA (i.e. in hoc signo vinces).