The Templar admission ceremony: secret or not?

"The eighty-eight charges against the Templars which were used as the basis of interrogations in the proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles, 1309–11, included the charge that admissions into the Order were secret, and that only brothers of the order were present. What are the facts?

The population of the Holy Land during the Crusading period

It is often thought that the crusaders in the different crusader states in the Holy Land were a tiny Christian elite ruling over predominantly Muslim populations. The facts are different.