To appreciate this, it is but necessary to consider such enactments as those of Honorius III for the protection of the Jews, of Clement VI, who threatened their persecutors with excommunication, and the action of Pope and Archbishop in the case of the inflammatory sermons of Hernando Martinez. It is sufficient to consider that when the Jews were driven out of Spain--as shall presently be seen--they actually found a refuge in Rome itself, and were received with kindliness by Pope Alexander VI (Roderigo Borgia), which in itself is one of the oddest ironies that ecclesiastical history can offer. And if this is not sufficient, let us for a moment consider the immunity and comparative peace enjoyed by the Jews who dwelt in Rome itself, in their district of Trastevere. They were a recognized section of the community in the Papal City. On his coronation procession each Pope would pause near the Campo de’Fiori to receive the company of Jews that came, headed by the Rabbi, to pay homage to their sovereign--precisely as their ancestors had come to pay homage to the emperor. To the Vicar of Christ the Rabbi would now proffer the rolls of the Pentateuch, swathed in a cloth. The Pope would take them into his hands, to show that he respected the law contained in them, and would then put them behind him, to signify that this law now belonged to the past. From behind the Pontiff the Rabbi would receive back his sacred scriptures, and depart with his escort, usually accompanied by the jeers, insults, and vituperations of the Roman populace.[48] It will be understood, then, that the Inquisition’s establishment in Spain was not urged for the purpose of persecuting the Jews. It had no concern with Jews, if we confine the term purely to its religious meaning, signifying the observers of the law of Moses. Its concern was entirely with the apostasy of those who, although of the Jewish race, had become Christians by conversion. By the subsequent secret re-Judaizings, or return of these New-Christians to the religion of their fathers (which they had abandoned out of material considerations), they came within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and rendered themselves liable to prosecution as heretics, a prosecution which could never have overtaken them had they but continued in their original faith.